Indian Lake State Park

Indian Lake is the scene you should make in the fall, Indian Lake State Park near Manistique Michigan that is. We took part in the annual fall trip to see the colors in Upper Michigan with a group of local friends. An average fall get together consists of  six or eight RVs but the group can get as big as a dozen.

We all meet in Forest Junction Wisconsin at the Railway Junction Cafe for a good breakfast before Oscar (the trip organizer), leads the group north. The caravan stays together pretty well but it can get strung out when we start hitting stoplights in cities; just about everyone in the group carries a portable handheld radio to keep them informed and Oscar will slow or stop to gather the group again.

When we arrived at Indian Lake we all registered, picked our sites and got set up. Due to the threat from the Emerald Ash Borer the state park system has rules that firewood must come from trees cut within a twenty or thirty mile radius of the park so Oscar contacted a local firewood dealer and filled his truck with wood for the nightly camp fires; to bad the wood was primarily ash, the ranger would not allow it into the park so it went back to the dealer where it was unloaded and replaced with other hardwoods.

Campsites at Indian Lake

Our site had a view of the lake

Sandy and Spunky at Indian Lake

From Indian Lake we took several driving tours to other parks located in that part of the UP. Nearby we visited Palms Book State Park which surrounds the spring fed KITCH-ITI-KIPI pool that has an arm-powered raft that will take your group out onto the 40 foot deep pool where you can observe the billowing sand on the bottom where the spring water enters the pool.

We took a ride north to Lake Superior where we visited Pictured Rocks National Seashore. We drove along the lake superior shoreline on some barely improved roads and visited one of the waterfalls located there, I believe it was Munising Falls.

Lake Superior Shoreline at Pictured Rocks

Our group takes in the falling water

We also visited Fayette Historical State Park which is the remnants of an old lime kiln factory town built around a port on Big Bay de Noc on Lake Michigan. You can take a stroll around the town and view the kilns and the restored buildings including homes, stores and the hotel.

Buildings at Fayette, the hotel is on the left

The harbor and managers home at Fayette

Every evening the group would get together around the fire to talk about the day or where we were going tomorrow. This was an enjoyable trip but all to soon the group was headed south for Wisconsin; some would return home but the rest would meet at Point Beach State Park near Two Rivers for the 2nd part of this vacation.