We took the family to the Porcupine Mountains over Memorial Day weekend. We packed somewhat light, although we had both Annabelle and Buster in tow. Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park is the largest park in Michigan. It’s in the Upper Peninsula.
We planned on camping Friday night through Sunday morning. Our plans changed a bit due to the weather. The forecast was below freezing on Friday. We spent that night at my brother’s cabin in Presque Isle Wisconsin, which was about 45 minutes away. We stayed in site 66 at Union Bay campground. The campground is very open. It’s basically a field with a few trees scattered throughout the campground. The sites aren’t private at all. They did have running water and showers.
At the Porkies you’re able to go back country camping if you want. There are a lot of trails to hike. From what I can tell, you could hike everything from a day hike if you didn’t want to base camp instead. Annabelle is only four. So the hikes we did were generally short, maybe a mile or two. We would pick out an attraction to go see, like a waterfall. Linda had a better bearing on the names of the waterfalls and trails on the map. I wanted to get some notes down before I forget too much. She can always go back and update.
While we were there, we saw some interesting wildlife. When we first got to the park, we saw a coyote walking down the road. It was a ways away from us. I think there was a chance we could see a wolf up there. But this K9 was too small to be a wolf. The day before we left, we hiked the interpretive trail nearest the headquarters. While we were on that trail, we saw a fisher. We had a lot of distance between us but the fisher was timid and quick. I snapped a picture of him before we scared him off.
One of the things I wanted to see at the Porcupine Mountains was the ghost town. There is an abandoned mining village with a lot of history behind it. We saw the brick shell remnants from buildings. One of the trails went past a part of the river where they used to have a water wheel. You could see where the rock in in the river was cut for the wheel. We also saw a number of mining shafts, some of which were collapsed.
The park runs alongside Lake Superior. The river flows into the great lake. There is also an inland lake called Lake of the Clouds. We took in a beautiful view of it. It was a short hike. The landscape makes a sort of a bowl, with the Lake of the Clouds at the bottom of it. Tons of beautiful trees surround it.
The day we left, Annabelle had a ton of fun climbing on the rocks alongside Lake Superior right next to the campground. She had a ton of energy. We figured it would be good to let her romp around and get some energy out.
The Porkies has a number of cabins and yurts out in the woods. You can reserve them. So even in the winter, you could hike to them and stay over night. I thought that would be fun to try sometime. Perhaps when Belle is older.