It has been just about a year that @mrsbozz and I visited Wilderness State Park in the far north western part of Michigan's lower peninsula. If you have been following me for a while now, you might remember this post from last year. It was our first time at the park and unfortunately, we had to cut our trip short due to a water leak issue.
This year, we didn't have to cut our trip short, but we still had a bit of a water issue. It poured pretty much non stop on Saturday, but we had a full day on Friday and made the most of our trip anyway!
Thankfully, before the rain moved in, we were able to head down to the beach and spend a little bit of time there on Thursday night watching the sunset. Wilderness State Park sits on the shores of Lake Michigan about 11 miles west of Mackinaw City according to their webpage. The park covers 10,512 acres and boasts 26 miles of shoreline along Lake Michigan. While it is a bit rocky in places, it isn't uncommon to find the beaches full of people on warm summer days.
The park also has over 20 miles of trails and is considered a dark sky preserve.
Last year, our view of the skies was obscured by smoke from the wildfires in Canada. This year, we had to deal with the clouds. This is a pretty amazing park and I hope to one day make it back when the weather conditions are a bit more favorable. The park also sits 9 miles down the road from the Headlands Dark Sky park which I will be writing about in another post.
Wilderness is comprised of four separate camping areas each one consisting of somewhere between 50 and 100 sites. Last year we were in an area called "The Pines" which is a short walk away from the water. This year we were lucky enough to snag one of the sites in the sections down by the water. We weren't right on the water like the sites above, instead, we were about two sites away which ultimately ends up being about 100 to 200 feet, not too bad!
The way the reservation system works in the state of Michigan is sites open up six months in advance of when you plan your trip. I usually spend a good deal of time in the Winter trying to figure out where we are going to camp and then booking those sites as soon as the window opens at 8AM on the given day. Even so, there are still some campgrounds that are nearly impossible to get into.
The reservation system is a bit of a game honestly, and like all things, people have found a way to take advantage of the system. Let's say I know I want to go camping over a weekend from June 20th to the 23rd. That means I have to make my reservations on December 20th of the previous year. The system allows you to reserve sites for a total of 14 days, so what people do is they reserve sites from June 10th through June 23rd, and then go in later and cancel all the days except the 20th through the 23rd.
It's genius if it wasn't so frustrating. The state has started to charge cancellation fees to help cut down on that sort of thing, but when the sites are only about $30 a night, it doesn't really deter a lot of people.
As you can see though, for those of us who are simply trying to book from the 20th to the 23rd, when we log in on December 20th, everything is going to show as booked. Yes, you can set alerts so that when people cancel you can try to get in and book one of those sites, but so is everyone else that wants the sites.
Like I said, it's a bit of a game.
Wilderness is also one of the few state park campgrounds in the state that has "full hookup" sites. What that means is at those camping sites, you have full access to electricity (usually 20, 30, and sometimes 40 amp), water, and a sewer connection. Most state parks only offer electricity at their sites and the rustic campgrounds offer nothing. As you can imagine, those handful of full hookup sites get snagged up pretty fast.
Our friends that we travel with were on site 457 and we were on site 459. The numbers are just how they distinguish the loops. It's not an indication of how many sites are actually in the park. Though they could definitely fit 500+ sites in this park.
Friday night is when the rain started to move in, but we were still able to get some glimpses of the sunset. We didn't walk down to the beach on this night. As I said, I hope we can visit again when the weather is more amicable.
The photo above gives a good idea of how far we were away from the water. There was a small patch of trees and undergrowth (mostly poison ivy!) right behind our trailer, then another row of trailers, the road, and finally a last row of trailers before the beach.
I actually didn't even notice it was poison ivy until one of the campground hosts walked around and pointed it out to us. Thankfully I hadn't already rolled around in it or anything. It was pretty too look at, but we gave it a wide berth after finding that out.
I am part of a Michigan State Park Camping group on Facebook. People have been mentioning that the stable flies have been horrible in the northern parts of the state this year, but we didn't seem bothered by them too much. We've also heard reports that the tick population is high again this year, but we didn't pick up any of those pets either.
Despite the few small hiccups, it was still a pretty awesome weekend and Wilderness State Park is on our short list of parks that we would definitely visit again. There is a lot of really cool things in this area of the state that I will be talking about in some future posts. I hope you come back to read all about it!
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