Cheboygan State Park
Where we stayed: Site 48, drive-in, with fire pit, picnic table, Lake Huron adjacent
Good for: Car camping, families, RVs
Not great for: Backpacking, solitude
Pros: Plumbing, clean bathrooms, plentiful drinking water, fire pit, birdwatching, sunsets
Cons: Popular, full of cars and RVs, difficult not to see the other campers from our site
Website
Reservations
Day 4
The Thunderbird thankfully gave us no trouble starting, which I was concerned about following the morning we left Wells State Park. We probably left Pictured Rocks around noon and drove directly to Grand Marais, Michigan. After a solid day hike Dave and I usually try to find a local tavern or diner because at that point any local food is great. Grand Marais gave us the West Bay Diner, a really cute old diner staffed by a friendly young lady who is studying the history of small towns in the rural Great Lakes region (that’s what she told us anyway.) The coffee is hot, the service is slow, the handsoap in the bathroom was plentiful. That is to say, it was exactly what we needed when we needed it.
It’s about a two hour drive from Grand Marais to Cheboygan State Park. This would be the shortest drive of the trip and Cheboygan is not known (apparently) for its outdoor recreation. The handful of people we told our plans to while we were still in the UP said things to us like “Huh, they got camping in Cheboygan?” Yes, folks. They do. Truth be told, there wasn’t too much outstanding about the park itself. We picked Cheboygan for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it wasn’t a long drive from Pictured Rocks and after two nights sleeping rough, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time in the car. Secondly, because it had high tech facilities like running water and flush toilets, which are both nice for comfort reasons and because I wouldn’t have to pump my own drinking water by hand. Lastly, it was on Lake Huron, which would just tick one more of the list of Great Lakes to see on this trip. Every campsite had a picnic table and a solid concrete firepit.
This was part of the road trip I was personally looking forward to because we would need to pass through one of the last remaining vibrant vestiges of the mid-century American love affair with the automobile. St. Ignace is one of those towns that popped up as a roadside respite for people on the newly-constructed highway during the postwar boom. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan meets the Mitten at exactly one place, St. Ignace. The only road between the two is via the 5-mile long Mackinac Bridge. It’s an engineering marvel, and it costs $8 to cross. When the bridge opened up in 1957, St. Ignace embraced the flood of new drivers and opened up tchotchke shops, restaurants and tourist traps that are still around today. We paid $1 to climb a clapboard faux lighthouse to get a better view of the suspension bridge and we paid a visit to the Mystery Spot where we were cheated nice and fair. I had a great time and would happily get cheated fair again.
Do you know what a pastie is? (Not that, get your mind out of the gutter.) A pastie is a meat or veggie hand pie and a traditional meal in the UP. We were advised by a local to stop by Suzy’s Pasties on our way through and my only regret is not buying way more pasties from her. There is no eat-in option, she only sells pasties to go. They come in beef, chicken or veggie options and she will sell them to you at temperatures that range from completely frozen to cold. This is the best that roadside America could possibly offer and that is a high compliment. We got a couple of cold beef pasties, wrapped them in tinfoil, and heated them by the campfire in Cheboygan. If I could, I would have divorced Dave and married that hand pie but instead I just ate it and didn’t even need to call an attorney. If you are in St. Ignace and you don’t try to visit Sue’s you are making a terrible mistake.
We arrived at Cheboygan State Park fairly late in the day. Which was fine, honestly. It wasn’t a big hiking day but we were both completely exhausted. I set up the tent while Dave built a fire. We did manage to dry out a great deal of our stuff this way. Lake Huron, at least at this particular spot, pales in comparison to Lake Superior or Green Bay for beauty but that’s okay. Our shores were marshy and full of birds and we had a pretty good view of the sunset from near our campsite. A grove of trees kept the wind from being too harsh on our site. We watched huge groups of ducks migrate north for the season while the light faded.
Camp Thunderbird Day 5: Ludington State Park
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=1P0XG06hXW1-P5of2kUHGmY9TebA&w=640&h=480]