Yankee Springs

Recently Brother purchased a 13 foot Winnebago trailer.

He's spent the last few months fixing it up and it was finally ready for its maiden voyage this past weekend. He checked out the internet and found a Michigan State Park that was about halfway between his house in Detroit and our house in Chicagoland, so we all set off on Friday and met in the middle.

Having never been to this particular campground, none of us knew which were the good sites. Luckily, when Husband, Daughter and I showed up, the man in the guard shack told us that we could take a drive through the place and pick out whatever looked good to us. There were some sites that were just pretty terrible, but there were also a nice selection of good sites as well. We were actually rather surprised at how scarce the campers were. We've been to places that were wall to wall with people by Friday night, but apparently Yankee Springs Deep Lake unit isn't one of them. We found some nice deep sites near a water pump, the outhouses, and a swingset.


Brother and his crew arrived a couple of hours after us, by which time Daughter had discovered that there were a lot of toads and tree frogs in the area.


Nephew was especially enamored of the frogs and caught 8 or 10 of them over the course of the weekend.


One of the points of interest in the area is the Devil's Soupbowl, which is advertised as a glacially carved kettle. On the map it seems to be a pretty impressive feature. After making the 2 mile hike to get there, we have all determined that it needs to be renamed the Devil's Disappointment. It's a large low place to be sure, but it is also full of mature trees, making it impossible to really see it. Even though it was slightly less than impressive, we did climb down to the bottom, just so we could say that we had.


Other than a trip to the beach (sans camera, sorry) we spent the remainder of the trip hanging out at the campfire. There was a lot of cooking,


and eating,


and children playing in the dirt.


So after a couple of good nights' sleep


it was time to wipe down the tent (because naturally it rained like heck the night before we left)


and head back to civilization. And as I stare at the pile of laundry that needs to be washed, and look at the decimated refrigerator contents, I'm wishing I was still relaxing in the woods.