Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is another National Park that runs along the lakeshore for an extended distance. This park is on Lake Superior, and coming from Tahquamenon State Park, we traveled from east to west. After lunch and computer work at the bar, we drove another hour or so to the small town of Grand Marias, just outside the northeast side of the park. The first thing we did was take a hike down a trail through the woods to the lakeshore. The trail followed a creek with beautiful waterfalls, and the creek ran into Lake Superior. We then drove to the site where there used to be a log slide, so when the shores of the lake were being logged, the loggers could get the logs to the top of a giant dune and put them in a wooden log slide to send them into the lake. The wooden log slide is long gone, but you can still see where it was on the very steep side of the dune.
Visiting these sites took us most of the afternoon, and we had to find a place to stay. We had hoped to stay at one of the campgrounds in the park, but they’re all reservation only, and the reservations must be made on line, and reservations must be made at least a day in advance. So, although we saw many empty campsites, we couldn’t stay in the park. Fortunately for us, Kingston Lake State Campground was just outside the park boundaries, and only about five miles from the national park campground. We were glad we had purchased the Michigan Recreation Pass because it’s required at state campgrounds, on top of the $20 fee for the night. If we’d had to purchase a recreation pass at that point we would have passed, because although the small campground is very pretty, it has no services and wouldn’t be worth $31 for the night. We were a little peeved even with the $20 fee, and since we were the only ones in the campground that night, it seems like other travelers are deciding that the Michigan camping policies aren’t exactly user friendly. The clouds of mosquitoes didn’t make us feel any more amicable towards the state, but we know the park officials can’t control that.
In the morning, we drove back up to the National Park and took a hike along the lakeshore to the lighthouse. After that, we continued east and drove to the Miners Castle area where we walked to another waterfall, then walked along the lakeshore between the Miners Castle rock formation and Miners Beach. The park is very beautiful, with pine forests running to the edge of the bluffs, and many small creeks running over waterfalls to empty into the lake. We decided it was too chilly to take a boat out into the lake to get a lakeside view of the Pictured Rocks, but there are many outcroppings as you walk along the bluffs so you can look back to the cliffs dropping into the lake.
We made one more stop to see one more waterfall at Munising, the town at the southwest side of the park. We planned to hike to a few more waterfalls in the Keewenaw Peninsula, so we headed west. We’d had enough of mosquito plagued overpriced campgrounds, so we made the choice to stay at a Walmart near the peninsula. We usually stay at Walmart when there isn’t a better nearby option, but in this case we stayed there because although a number of state campgrounds were in the vicinity, we needed a break from the mosquitoes, which a paved parking lot provided. We also went into the Walmart and bought hats and mosquito netting for our heads, which came in very handy the next day when we hiked.
In the morning, we drove to the trailhead for the O-Kun-De-Kun-Falls, and took a nice hike to see the multiple waterfalls along the trails. Unlike at the national park, the dogs could hike with us, and between not too many ticks on the dogs and making good use of our mosquito hats, it was a very pleasant hike. Since our anti-mosquito plan was working, we got brave and camped in the woods again that night, at a little Wisconsin Conservation Corps campground called Little Potato River Falls. We don’t know why Michigan can’t do what Wisconsin does and offer very nice and free campgrounds, especially since Little Potato River Falls was actually way nicer than Kingston Lake, and we were able to walk to multiple beautiful waterfalls along the river. The mosquitoes were still pretty thick, but the area was so beautiful it was worth it.
