Day 1 - Sunday, August 13
As I mentioned with the itinerary, I was really stressed about this trip. So much was going on and I was not at all ready for this trip. We weren't as packed as we normally are the day before. So we left later than we normally would have, at 10:15 a.m. we were finally on the road.
We stopped in Ironwood, MI to visit with a friend. We met her and her husband at Ironwood Historic Depot Park. The kids and the dogs were excited to get outside of the truck for a little bit! I enjoyed visiting and the dogs liked the walk. We didn't stay for too long so we could continue on to our campsite. We got to camp, Presque Isle Rustic Campground site 40, and set up. This site was okay, the one right across from us would have been perfect. We ate dinner, and went down to the water to check out Lake Superior. The sunset was so beautiful!
The park is in two time zones, our watches, and phones kept flipping back and forth on the time. It was hard figuring out how a hour passed so fast. It took us a few times, then we figured it out.
Day 2 - Monday, August 14
We had breakfast of pancakes, then cleaned up and set out for a hike. We were all so excited to head out on this hike. We hiked the waterfalls loop which was about 4 miles. It was a beautiful hike and we all enjoyed it so much!
When we got back to camp, we ate lunch and took a rest. We made several trips down to the water. It's so beautiful, and fun to look at all the rocks, so we just kept going back. We had chicken and potatoes for dinner. Then we headed down to the beach to watch the sunset.
Day 3 - Tuesday, August 15
This morning, we had breakfast then made our way to Summit Peak and we hiked to the top of tower. With was another nice hike. It was another lovely day. It was such a cool view from the top of the tower.
From there, we headed to the Alpine area so we could get a magnet. We get a magnet from places we visit. They go on our fridge at home. We let the kids get a souvenir. P got a blanket, T got a hiking stick, and V got a shirt. I got a sweatshirt. I had packed layers, but I was still cold the first night. I got Marcus a UV light so we could search for Yooperlites.
Then we drove to Lake of the Clouds and hiked to the overlook. This was the busiest place we hiked this whole trip. It was very crowded!
Next, we headed out to get gas and some groceries. We didn't have cell service, so we couldn't look up the closest grocery store. This is something that I usually look up in advance before our trip, but I didn't get a chance to. We ended up driving over 20 miles. We still didn't have cell service, we stopped at a gas station and filled up, and I picked up some groceries. The lady at the gas station was super nice and sold me some hot chocolate for the machine since they didn't have hot chocolate for sale. We had ran out, and wanted more if we were going to have more cool nights. Now looking at a map, we were just on the outside of Ontonagon, MI.
We then headed back to camp. We had skipped lunch and only had snacks, so we made an early dinner of hamburgers for dinner. We hadn't gotten ice when we stopped because it was hot out and we didn't have our coolers with us. We realized when we got back to camp that we needed more ice. So I drove to Wakefield to get ice.
We went on another short hike this afternoon from the campground. It was another great hike. Once again, we went down to the water and watched the sun set.
Day 4 - Wednesday, August 16
This morning after breakfast, we headed to Little Carp River and we went on another lovey hike. This time about 2 miles. V found a little inch worm and had fun bringing him along on the hike. At one point she thought she had put him down, but then we found him on her shirt. She also carried him very carefully in her hands. We put him back down on our way out about where she found him.
Marcus had gone ahead with the two older kids because V had a hard time navigating the boards to keep out of the mud. The boards were two 1x4's for the most part. Due to her vision she has a hard time with depth perception and this was challenging for her. They were also at various heights so she was also having to navigate stepping up and down as well. The older kids loved trekking on these through the woods.
Then we drove to the Porkies Roadside Park and had a picnic lunch and swam in the water on the beach. I wanted to see how I could manage in the cold water so I swam for about 7 minutes. We headed back to camp and made potatoes, celery, onion, and ground beef for dinner.
That afternoon, we received a sever thunderstorm warning on our phones. We were leaving the next day, so we packed everything except the tents, sleeping bags, and rain coats. It was a busy night packing everything up. We saw the storm roll in and just before bedtime, we jumped in the tents. We had taken two tents on this trip the kids had been in our bigger tent, and Marcus and I were in one of our backpacking tents. Marcus had told the kids if he tells them it's an emergency, to just get out of the tent and don't grab anything.
It was really windy and a loud thunderstorm and the kids were freaking out. I told P to just put her raincoat on and we would swap. I chose to swap with her so we didn't have to worry about changing sleeping bags since I could fit in her sleeping bag. We counted it down, and ran. We should have just split up before going to bed knowing that it was going to be a bad storm.
T kept asking if now was the emergency. V kept saying "I'm freaking out right now" They eventually fell asleep. Once the storm died down, I finally fell asleep as well.
Day 5 - Thursday, August 17
We woke up early this morning. Since we didn't have much to pack, we quickly emptied the tents and flipped them over to dry out. The wind was still blowing quite hard, so it didn't take long for them to dry off enough to pack up and get on our way. We had a long drive today! We headed out of camp at 6:50 a.m.
We stopped at the Super One Foods in Marquette, MI for breakfast. We picked up some fresh fruit and pastries. Everyone went to the bath room, and Marcus walked the dogs a bit. Then we were quickly on the road again.
Today was a beautiful drive, though rainy! We will diffidently come back to the UP and spend at least a week checking it out. We were all a little tired today though with the storm the night before keeping us awake. We'd go through periods of downpour then sprinkling, then another downpour.
We drove over the Mackinac Bridge and we desperately wanted a nicer lunch. Marcus found Scalawags Whitefish & Chips online. We parked, in Mackinaw City along Central Ave and found the restaurant. We didn't want to leave the dogs in the truck for long, especially since it was raining so we didn't want to leave the windows down, so Marcus took the dogs for a walk, then went to fill up the truck.
A reminder, we had purchased this truck on July 20, 2023, in Kentucky as our van died on our trip. So we'd had the truck for less than a month. After Mackinac bridge, we started to have an issue filling up the truck, which hadn't happened to us before. The pump kept stopping after a gallon. This made us very nervous. We kept stopping at different gas stations trying to get it to work. Add the downpours, long drive, and my overall stress of the trip, this day was getting long!
I didn't document all of the stops we make to gas stations, but it was a lot. We were finally able to fill up the tank all the way. When we returned home, we did get the truck looked at. This apparently is a known issue, and we were able to fix it under the warranty we had purchased when we purchased the truck.
We finally made it to Bruin Campground at 7:23 p.m. When we arrived, there wasn't someone in the office. There was a sign to call a number to check in. I called, gave her my name, and told her where we were. She checked us in and we went to find our site. There was a playground we could see from our site, so we told the kids that they could play while we set up camp. We set up the two tents, the CLAM Quick-Set, and made spaghetti for dinner.
This camp ground was mostly RV's and pop-up campers. We hardly saw any other tents. It had bathrooms with showers and I was surprised because I didn't remember us booking a place with a shower, but i figured I just miss remembered since it was a while ago.
Day 6 - Friday, August 18
We wake up and start getting things ready around camp to make breakfast and shower. A park employee comes over and asks us about our information. We give it to him. Turns out we went to the wrong campground. The Pinkney Recreation Area has a ton of campgrounds. In my high stress before the trip, I didn't double check everything, and I just put the first address I saw on the confirmation email. Also, the employee I had spoken to the night before let me check-in to the wrong campground! Notice that the directions to the correct campground are all the way at the bottom.
Now we needed to pack up the campsite, and move to our correct one. I messaged my sister to let her know because she was coming to visit that day with her family. Marcus and I quickly take down camp with the kids help and throw everything into the truck, and drive the 7.8 miles to the correct campground, Crooked Lake Rustic Campground.
I was so annoyed at this point. I don't usually make an error like this. Also, I was really annoyed that the employee that I spoke with the night before would have allowed us to check-in at the wrong campground. There was a code on the office door, and I had given it to her when we checked in. We also hadn't eaten yet because we had wanted to get to the correct site, so at this point everyone was getting hungry too.
Though it was annoying to switch campsites, this campsite was so much better. It was secluded at the end of the campground and quite. The only problem was there was glass everywhere! I've never seen so much glass in one spot before. We were picking up shards of glass of all sizes all weekend long. I'm so shocked that the kids, nor Marcus sliced their feet open as they were always running around barefoot. I kept asking them to to put shoes on, but to no avail.
We set up camp and made pancakes. This site also didn't have cell service so I wasn't getting any updates from my sister, so I wasn't sure when she was going to show up.
I received a message that they were on the way, and then about seven minutes later, they showed up. So there was a big delay when she sent the message as they were over an hour away. We drove to the beach on Silver Lake, ate lunch, and the kids swam. It was a really windy day so the kids were cold swimming in the water. We ended up moving by the playground which was down a hill on the other side of the beach and protected by the wind and that was warmer.
After they left, we went to find a grocery store to get food for dinner. Marcus picked up some pork and veggies to go with. We got back to camp and made dinner then went to bed.
Day 7 - Saturday, August 19
This morning, we hiked to Halfmoon Lake. We wanted to see if it would be a manageable way for me to get to the race the next day. It trail was nice, but it was a little far for me to hike by myself so early in the morning, I would have needed to leave at 4:00 a.m. to allow for extra time to navigate it in the dark. It was nice to see where the swim would start.
The round trip hike was 3.47 miles. We had lunch after we got back to camp. We cleaned up from lunch and took a short rest before we headed over to get my packet for the event the next day. There was a lot of excitement in the air as there are at these events.
After we picked up the packet, we went to Halfmoon Lake to let the kids swim. They loved swimming. They said they had a 'lagoon' where there was a Weeping Willow right on the lake.
Since I didn't plan meals before we left and we had initially planned on spending more time with my sister, we had ran out of meals and we were taking it day by day. Usually for longer trips we plan a restock day where I look up a grocery store, and plan what we are going to pick up, but that didn't happen on this trip either. I really wanted pizza this night, and I thought I had seen a pizza place, so we thought we'd head there. We really didn't have cell service by any of the parks, so it made looking things up really challenging. I navigated by memory to the pizza place to find out it was permanently closed. I was so disappointed.
Marcus went into the grocery store and got items to make dinner. He cooked rice, bell pepper, cheese, onion, tomatoes, tomato sauce, seasoning, and left over pork chops. It was so good! The family absolutely loved it.
Day 8 - Sunday, August 20
My alarm was set for 5:00 a.m. We had to get to the start of the swim event! It was hard to get all of the kids in the truck. We didn't have them change, just woke them up and put them in the truck.
The swim was scheduled to start at 6:30 a.m., we had to drive to the start/finish. Get access to the park, park, and I would need to use the restroom. We parked, and Marcus had to use the restroom too. So we got out of the truck, and I grabbed my gear. V wanted to come with so I brought her along and we headed to the long line for the bathrooms. I passed V off to Marcus, then wen to the bathroom. I didn't see them after I got out so I headed to the start. Unfortunately, I didn't see them again before I started the swim. That made me sad as I got going. Marcus took the kids and dogs back to camp for the majority of my swim.
I swam the 10k in 3:54:56. It was a fun swim through a chain of lakes. I'd love to do it again. Marcus and the kids & dogs were all waiting for me at the finish! We went right back to camp and ate brunch. I was so hungry! Then I took a rest in the hammock.
This day was hot! After my rest, we took the kids to Silver Lake to swim. This time the lake was packed! There was hardly anywhere to go. It was crazy the difference from Friday, to Sunday.
Marcus found a spot with cell service and found a pizza place in Chelsea for dinner. Thompson's Pizza was just what we needed. It was still really hot out. The kids had all fallen asleep on the 25 minute drive. Thompson's had a nice patio and we could park close by in the shade. We left the truck running with the AC going to let the kids sleep. We ordered the pizza, and pretzel's. We had almost finished the pretzel when the kids started to wake up. We ended up waking up V when the pizza came. The pizza was good! Just what we needed that night.
We walked the dogs a little bit too. It was a fun evening. We then went to Spad's Twisters to get ice cream. Then we drove back to camp. Everyone was tired after a long day, but we still packed up camp a bit. We had a long drive home the next day.
Day 9 - Monday, August 21
We got early as we didn't sleep well. We packed up camp and headed on our way home at 8:00 a.m. This was a 9.5 hour drive, and we knew it was going to be a long day. We stopped for lunch at Bonchon Skokie, in Skokie, IL. It was okay. The kids really liked it. We walked the dogs too while we were stopped. The restaurant was a little out of our way. If we we're to do that route again, we would probably pack a lunch, or find a place in advance. Then we continued on home. We were all exhausted when we got home!
We really enjoyed the UP and can't wait to go back. I loved the Swim to the Moon event, and I'd love to do it again someday.
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