A big part of my August was spent in Northern Michigan vacationing with my family. We had lots of fun and I got to spend some good time being Aunt Amy. Much of the time was spent on Crooked Lake, which is in the upper part of the Lower Peninsula. It’s a relatively small lake but is connected to a series of lakes that together are known as the Inland Waterway because (with only a small portage) it connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.
Activities included:
- Watching the Top O’ Michigan Outboard Boat Racing Marathon. The boats are small and loud and they speed by, so the kids were excited to see them. My sister and I remember being the kids’ age and running down to the beach to see them.
- Swimming in the lake and jumping off the dock.
- Taking the boat down Crooked River, going through the locks, stopping in Alanson for donuts from the Dutch Oven, then boating back home.
- Looking for Petoskey stones in the secret place nearby.
- Taking the boat to Pickerel Lake to go fishing. We didn’t catch anything, but on a second night of fishing on Crooked Lake the kids caught a really big bass!
Another thing that’s fun to do near our cottage is to go hiking in any of the nearby Little Traverse Conservancy nature preserves. The Conservancy works with all kinds of people to protect the beautiful natural environment in Northern Michigan. The preserves include all sorts of terrain and ecosystems. Quite a few of the preserves have hiking trails. They’re some of my favorite places Up North.
A few of the Little Traverse Conservancy preserves have beaches on Lake Michigan, and that’s always extra fun. We have several different beaches we like to visit. This time we went to the Woollam Family Preserve. There’s a nice little hike to get to the lake. It was a little cloudy, but we all jumped in the cold Lake Michigan water to swim. Then the kids built a sand castle and attempted to protect it from the destructive waves.
Another activity was visiting the Oden Fish Hatchery. It raises brown and rainbow trout to stock streams across Michigan. When we got our instructions for joining the tour, the woman at the information desk told us excitedly that it would be an extra interesting tour because they were doing an egg take.
It was interesting and a little weird, but the hatchery staff all seemed enthusiastic about their jobs, so that made it fun. We saw how they anesthetized the fish then squeezed them just right and a whole bunch of eggs came spewing out. Then they tossed the fish into the recovery tank. I didn’t get a very good photo, but my niece drew a very accurate picture of what the egg collection looked like.
The grounds at the fish hatchery are pretty, with lots of native plants and a below-water-level stream viewing area. There’s a train car there to tell the history of transporting fish by rail many years ago.
Yet another activity was miniature golfing at the Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf Course. It’s really campy and corny and there are huge waterfalls and gimmicky holes and fake pirates everywhere (I’m surprised Disney hasn’t sued for copyright infringement), but all of that makes it fun. My sister and I have had fun there since we were kids ourselves. I mention it here because among the fake pirates and generic Jolly Rogers there were some of the nicest flower beds I saw on the trip. It was a weird juxtaposition.
My family has vacationed along Crooked Lake for my entire life, so my sister and I have gone about everywhere there is to go in the area nearby. One place that we had not seen before was the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula. We all wanted to go camping, so we collected tents and camping supplies and headed there during the last few days of our trip.
We found a nice state campground located on a small lake near Pictured Rocks. It was rustic, with only pit toilets, but our campsite was very scenic and peaceful. From it, we could easily explore the sights. It rained as we set up camp, and when we took a short hike past Sable Falls to the Lake Superior Shore, the lake was incredibly gusty, steely, and cold.
By the next day, the weather had cleared. We saw Miners Falls and Miners Castle before hiking to Lake Supeior at Miners Beach, and it was a completely different lake. Everything was an incredible azure blue. We enjoyed the scenery and a nice hike.
The next day, our last in the U.P., we decided we could do the 6+ mile hike to the quintessential spot at Pictured Rocks: Chapel Rock. We knew it would be a challenge for the kids, but they persevered and we were successful! It was a beautiful spot and a great hike. The whole way, the forests were varied and impressive. The trees were incredibly tall and dense. There was a magical quality in the air.
While camping, we got to eat good camp food. I’d taken a hobo pie maker, thinking we’d use it one night to make pizzas and dessert pies in the fire. We made the pizzas using the standard white bread and pizza toppings, but then it was too late in the evening to make dessert. The pizzas were a hit with the kids, though.
The next night we made extra gourmet dessert pies using a fancy recipe from Traverse Magazine. Traverse had a photo spread of fancy, happy people making their gourmet hobo pies, which I have reproduced for you below–just kidding.
The gourmet pies used Pillsbury croissants in a can for their dough. I made it even fancier by using a jar of American Spoon Foods cherry Fruit Perfect rather than plebeian cherry pie filling. There were also chocolate chips sprinkled in–I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate. The croissant dough was more difficult than white bread to cook correctly, but it was worth it. I took pride in besting Traverse Magazine in the gourmet department.
The next morning, we wanted to have a simple breakfast before hitting the long trail to Chapel Rock. The adults were going to have pancakes. The night before, a couple of other campers tipped John and I off to where we could find gobs of wild blueberries, so we’d done some twilight picking and were looking forward to especially wonderful pancakes.
But then we realized we didn’t have a griddle to make the pancakes. No worries! We’d use another pan. But then the gas for the camp stove ran out. What to do? We’d been looking forward to the blueberry pancakes.
The hobo pie maker came to the rescue! We separated the two pie maker halves and used them like mini cast iron skillets. We heated them well in the fire, then added batter and blueberries before cooking one side, flipping them, then browning the other. It was slow going, but it was a fun innovation. I felt even more like I’d bested the happy, ritzy people in the Traverse Magazine photo shoot. And, yay for the handy, dandy hobo pie maker that we ended up using every day in a different way!
Squirrels and Tomatoes 