Getting to the Porkies

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit." - Edward Abbey

Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - Friday, July 2, 2021

Before I walk you through this short piece on getting further and further north, I need to go back to our first night on this trip back in Indiana Dunes National Park. In all of the chaos that was that first travel day, rain-soaked evening, and a wild night, I completely neglected to mention our campsite visitors at 1:00 a.m.

You don't want campsite visitors at 1:00 a.m. You especially don't want campsite visitors if they are of the racoon variety.

The commotion that came with that first day meant that, like this addendum, I forgot to do some things. I forgot to pack our cooler away before calling it quits for the night. All of our food - the meals Cara prepared and the groceries we purchased - was stolen and scattered. Honestly, we probably could have been fined by park rangers for doing something so stupid. But we cleaned things up - the campsite and not so much our egos - and added it to the growing list of "lessons learned."

Anyways...

The path to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan would take us through a big city and small town after small town. It would also take us to a pitstop at a campground in a wooded state park in Wisconsin.

On Wednesday, knowing that we had a roughly 5-6 hour drive ahead of us, including passing through Chicago, we packed things up, let the girls get some energy out at the campground playground, and kicked things into drive.

I remember the drive not being nearly as bad as that first one. I think we ran into some light rain around Chicago, but the traffic wasn't that bad and the weather cleared up the further we got away from the city. We had a playground and state park picked out as rest stop options. But when you travel with two kids under three, you're on their schedule. We'd look for places to stretch the legs as we went along.

Eventually, afternoon came around, and we pulled into Council Grounds State Park in the town of Merril, Wisconsin.

It was a nice park - plenty of shade thanks in part to the numerous trees. Council Grounds reminded us a lot of the typical wooded, rustic campgrounds you might find at Pennsylvania State Parks.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

We set up camp, ate some snacks, and began to check the park out. Our itinerary had us here for only one night, so we weren't going to venture past the borders of this state park.

A short path through the woods of the campground put us right onto a one-way park loop road that ran along a dammed river.

Along the path, we headed out to the dam to check out the sites and sounds. The weather was comfortable and perfect for walking, sightseeing, and playing. I recall this as being one of the first times Acadia wanted to "hike." She did well on the journey there but didn't say "no" to getting carried back to camp - or the "triangle house" as she started to call it.

A little bit more and there was a playground at the top of a swimming beach.

A rural park in the middle week meant we had the place to ourselves. The girls could play. The dog could swim.

We eventually walked our way back to the camp, let the girls play some more, and ate dinner by the campfire.

The night went well and did not include any racoons.

The next day, we packed up, took some showers, and got everybody ready for a short drive through northern Wisconsin and into the Upper Peninsula. This trip was short at only about 2:30-3:00 hours - much more manageable for everybody in the travel party. And this trek took us through many lakes and some really cute towns.

The closer we got to our destination - Union Bay Campground in the Porcupine Mountains State Park - the more we knew this was going to be worth it.

So as the "time left until you reach your destination" trickled down to minutes, there was a buzz in the air. We had made it. This was going to be a fun place to stay.

And that story is for the next post.