Trip to Michigan--the campsite

We drove almost 7 hours to Baldwin, MI to camp along the Pere Marquette River. We camped at Gleason's Landing, a small Natl. Forest campground. It had only six rustic sites. "Rustic" means a vault toilet and a water pump on site, but not much else. The individual sites were nicely spaced and the fire pits were good and our particular site had two picnic tables which was quite handy. There was only one other family camping there, too, which was a big plus.

 Justin kept wanting to help chop wood. You can't cut down any trees, of course, but you can use downed wood and some of the branches had to be broken down smaller. We were very glad that we remembered the camp stove this time, so that we didn't have to cook over an open fire even though Matt is getting very good at starting fires quickly.

The evenings were cool enough that we could put long pants and sleeves on the kids, which was good because there were tons of mosquitoes (no black flies, though). And the nights and mornings were downright cold. We had to buy extra blankets and a long-sleeved shirt for Matt.

The river was beautiful. We saw canoes and fly fishermen. The crappy fishing rods we bought the kids broke as were trying to set them up, but we didn't have any bait anyway. Fishing is a skill we will have to acquire over time. But the kids were just as happy throwing rocks.

Luke and Matt saw a crane one morning, but didn't have the camera. Otherwise, we saw deer, racoons and some kind of little forest mouse that sort of jumped like a bunny. I feel like I hit my stride with the cooking/cleaning routine on the third day--but the third day was our last day! So, just as I got used to things, it was time to go.  But we were tired of chasing Justin and trying to get him to sleep and me, Michael and Justin were covered in bug bites (the DEET apparently just made us more tasty), so it was time to go home. It was a really nice camping experience, though. We're hoping to get in one more trip closer to home this fall.