Michigan

We finally did it! We officially left Maryland and hit the road full-time on June 23rd, 2021. Our first “main” destination we had in mind was Michigan, for it’s insane lakes. We set out from little ole' Union Bridge, MD and headed to our first overnight stop, which was the Harvest Host Glades Pike Winery in Somerset, PA. Harvest Hosts is a really amazing membership program where you pay a small annual fee, which allows you to stay at over 2,000 wineries, breweries, and farms across the country. Your stay is totally free, they just ask you to purchase at least $20 worth of products from the business during your stay, which definitely isn’t a problem! Harvest Host is really amazing for overnight stays while traveling to a destination, we highly recommend purchasing a membership for anyone traveling in an RV, van, or skoolie!

On this first leg of the trip we learned just how much longer it takes to get everywhere in a school bus, while towing a Jeep at that. It took us about an hour and a half longer than it would in a regular car, but we made it to the gorgeous winery, tucked away in a small town that we definitely never would have gone to otherwise. The host was super nice, we were able to park on a flat gravel lot overlooking rolling hills and the vineyard, and we got a bottle of wine and delicious wine slushies to try. We found a pretty little hiking trail along the river nearby, and afterwards we headed back to the bus for the night, where we had the place all to ourselves since there were no other RVers staying that night.

From Somerset, PA we continued north to Rainbow Farms in Madison, OH. This Harvest Host was a farmers market, where we were able to buy fresh produce and stay at a pretty little lake, secluded way off the main road. The road back to the camping spot is a long dirt road, but it was easily passable in our bus, anc back at the campsite there is plenty of room to maneuver and turn around, so it was definitely big-rig friendly. There were two other Harvest Host guests staying in Vans that night, but the property is big enough that we were all pretty spread out. Since we woke up early each day to get our 4-5 hours of driving done in the morning, we arrived here around lunch time and had plenty of time to go out and explore. We found a really great beach access on Lake Erie that allowed dogs, so we hung out there for a few hours and went swimming before heading back to the bus for the night.

For our next overnight stop we headed to Cherry Creek Cellars in Brooklyn, Michigan. When we arrived it was pouring down rain, and the host did initially ask us to park on the grass (even though their Harvest Host profile promised a gravel lot for parking), but since we knew there was no way we could park on grass in the pouring rain and NOT get stuck, the host was nice enough to allow us to park in their gravel parking lot for the winery after-all. If you’re an RVer thinking about staying at this location, definitely keep in mind that their preferred parking location is on the grass, not the gravel lot as advertised! Since we had such horrible weather this day, we just hung out at the bus, had some amazing hard cider from the winery, and then headed out the next morning to our first location we planned to stay at for multiple days to explore.

After 3 long days of travel, we finally arrived at our first boondocking site, which was this free campground in the Manistee National Forest. There are about 20 spots, all first-come-first-served, and most spots are pretty decent in size. When we got there, there were about 5-6 sites taken already, so we chose the biggest left, but we probably would have fit in basically all the spots there, so it’s pretty big-rig friendly (for reference, our bus is 35ft long and we tow a Jeep Wrangler behind it.) This location is VERY secluded, and the campsites are spread out with decently thick woods in between each, so we felt comfortable running our generator when needed without causing too much of a disturbance to everyone. During the time we were there, we did feel comfortable enough leaving the bus for a few hours each day to go explore, but you definitely would want to evaluate the vibe there at the time of your stay depending on who else is also there. This location had zero service for T-Mobile and Verizon, but luckily AT&T had decent speeds, so I was able to upload and download files for my editing work just fine. The location was very wooded obviously, so it isn’t a great spot for solar if you rely on it for power. We have a pretty decently sized solar system, but we were very depleted by the end of our stay here since it’s dark in the woods for most of the day on top of it being dreary and rainy the whole time.

We stayed 3 nights at this location, and we had pretty bad weather almost the whole time. It rained a lot and when it wasn’t rainy, it was super cloudy, but we did manage to get out and explore along the shore of Lake Michigan. We went to Magoon Creek Park, which is a really pretty beach that allows dogs, and we learned that it’s the best beach on Lake Michigan to find Sea-glass. It was way too chilly for Josh and I to swim, but Sam loved it of course, and got to swim for a few hours each day.

Then we checked out the Manistee North Pierhead Lighthouse, and got some AMAZING burgers at The Painted Lady Saloon.

After 3 nights here, we were definitely ready to find a location with either solar or hookups, so we headed up North. We knew we wanted to explore the area around Traverse City and Torch Lake next, so that’s where we headed. We were lucky enough to grab a campsite with full hookups at Craven Park in Bellaire, which is a pretty busy little first-come-first-served campground. You just pay when you arrive if you can find a site (our spot was $25 a night for electric, water, and sewer hookups, and you can stay for as long as you’d like to basically. This campground has lots of spots, but they are really tight together and only a few would have fit our bus, so definitely keep that in mind if you’re thinking about staying here. This area has basically no service at all for T-mobile, AT&T, or Verizon (between Josh and I’s phones and our bus internet system, we have all 3 providers so we can see what has the best service everywhere we go) so I wasn’t able to upload or download files, and we weren’t even able to use the internet at all except when we went out exploring. Other than that our stay here was nice, and we ended up staying for 4 nights to make full use of the hookups to do all our laundry that we had saved up. It was a decent location to explore Traverse City and Torch lake, since the City was about an hour away and Torch Lake was only 20ish minutes.

For our first full day we headed out early to explore Traverse City. We walked around downtown for a while before lunch and took Sam for a swim at the little beach right in the heart of the city. I was completely blown away by how CLEAR the lake was, even right in the city. It truly looks like the Caribbean. After checking out a bunch of shops, we headed further West to do a hike near a little town called Leland. At this point we were ready for lunch, so we ended up having to go all the way into the town to grab some food, and we were SHOCKED at how insanely busy this teeny-tiny little town on the shore was! The main harbor was PACKED and there was this tiny little sandwich shop that had a 15 minute wait. We were pretty taken aback at how expensive the sandwiches were, but when we got them they were basically huge subs made of super fresh ingredients, and they were honestly worth every penny. After lunch we headed back up the shore a little ways and did the Clay Cliffs Loop trail (found on Alltrails). The overlook was foggy at the top, but the view from the top of the cliff was still pretty looking straight down to the water. After this hike we headed back to the campground, and stopped at a dog-friendly beach right near Traverse City to go for a swim and cool off.

The next day we spent exploring the area around Torch Lake and the shoreline of Lake Michigan right across from it. We started off with a hike at the Maple Bay Natural Area, which lead down to a gorgeous beach on Lake Michigan. This day was SUPER windy and chilly, so only Sam went swimming, but this would be a fantastic area to spend a whole beach day with your dog. There is SO much shoreline accessible all along the trail, so everyone there is spread out so you feel like you have the beach all to yourself.

After that hike, we checked out Torch lake at the Torch Lake Township Day Park. This was our first up-close view of the lake and we were blown away by the clarity! Dogs unfortunately aren’t allowed at the beach here, so we made plans to check out one of the other public access points the next day.

Then, we went back to the bus for dinner and then headed out for sunset, because this was the very first day in Michigan with clear enough weather for a real sunset. We drove all the way up to Charlevoix and ventured into Fisherman’s Island State Park. We drove back a super long gravel road that runs right along the shore, with lots of gorgeous campsites overlooking the water, and went all the way to the end of this road, basically out in the middle of nowhere to do our next “hike”. I wouldn’t call this one a true hike because it’s literally just along the beach, but we walked about a mile along the shore out to a peninsula where we had the whole beach to ourselves for a really gorgeous sunset.

The next day we went to one of the tiny public access points to the famous Torch Lake South Sandbar to swim. These access points are super hard to find, and we only found out about them by driving by. If you follow the main road that runs right along the southern shore of Torch Lake, you have to look right down in between all the lake houses and you’ll see 4-5 skinny public access points that are right on the sandbar. The one we decided on was on Pine Street, because it didn’t have anyone else there yet. Definitely go early if you want to snag one of these small spots! They can get filled up really quickly because most of them don’t have a typical “beach”, it’s more of just a walk-down to the water. We hung out here for an hour or two, and would have liked to stay longer and swim more, but it was barely 70 degrees so it was a bit too cold to swim too long. The water was absolutely gorgeous, and the sandbar is HUGE with water between knee and waist deep. Definitely worth a visit on your stay!

After almost a week in the Lower Peninsula, we headed up north to the Upper Peninsula where we planned to stay for another week. Most campgrounds near the best areas to explore up here were either completely booked (since we were there around the 4th of July) or super expensive, so we decided to stay at a super cheap ($100 for a week) first-come-first-served campground out in Pickford, which is literally in the middle of nowhere. We don’t mind doing long day trips to explore, so the cheap price was worth it for being pretty far from everything we wanted to do. The campground is pretty spacious, with electric hook-ups, free potable water, and $5 RV dumping. There are RV spots up near the front entrance of the park/RV campground, and toward the back there is a big open field with spots all around it. Even with getting here the day before the 4th of July, there were plenty of spots available, and as the week went on we ended up having the place basically to ourselves. The spots are all spaced out well on a really nice grassy area too, and the best part is we had great AT&T service for our internet, so overall this ended up being a great place to stay despite being out in the middle of nowhere.

During out stay here, we planned to stay for a week, which ended up working well since we had 2 super rainy days, so I got all my work done on those two days and then we spent the other days out exploring. We ending up finding a nice little hike (called the Woolam Preserve Loop) on the southeast corner of the peninsula that lead down to a beach that allows dogs, which was lucky since there aren’t any beaches on the eastern side that are listed online and specify that dogs are allowed.

On our first full-day outing, we took the ferry to Macinac Island. I definitely recommend getting an early start for this, since we got to the ferry around 10am and ended up having to wait until 11am to get on, since the line was so long. Ferry tickets are $27 each (and they allow dogs!), and there are two ferries that go to the island about every half hour during the day. We took the Shepler’s Ferry, which was lucky because they had more ferries running than the Star Line ferry. When we got to the island it was SUPER packed. As in, it felt like there were about a million people on the island! But it was still a super fun day trip because the island is really pretty, and extremely dog friendly. We walked out to Arch Rock, and then walked back toward the main area along the shore. Sam got to swim in Lake Huron (of course) and then I checked out some of the shops while Josh and Sam hung out on the big grassy area. At this point it was evening and we were pretty beat from all the walking, and keeping Sam from barking at the horses, so we took the ferry back.

For our last big day in the U.P. we did a tour of all the waterfalls that allowed dogs in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. This area is the “place to see” in the Upper Peninsula, but it is pretty limiting for dogs unfortunately. Since we were coming from Pickford, we drove the 2 hours out there and hit 4 locations going from East to West. Make sure to research thoroughly where dogs are allowed if you’re traveling with your pup, because there’s a huge section of the lakeshore that they aren’t allowed at all, and they’re basically only allowed on the short 0.5 mile trails that walk right to each overlook or waterfall, and some waterfalls they aren’t allowed at at all. Our first stop was Sable Falls, which had LOTS of stairs, but went past the super pretty waterfall and right to the shore of Lake Superior, where Sam got to swim in his 4th Great Lake. Next stop was Miners Castle Overlook. This area was already super busy at 10-11am, so definitely start early to explore this area! Then we went to Miners Falls, which was our favorite waterfall we saw. At the end of the short and easy trail, there is a platform to view the falls from above, but I highly recommend doing the short scramble down to the bottom of the falls if you’re able to. The view is SO much better from down there! Our last stop was Munising Falls, which was pretty but definitely not as exciting after Miners Falls, which is the largest waterfall by volume. There are LOTS more waterfalls in this area, but we were pretty tired after doing all these, and they seemed like the best ones that allowed Sam to come, so after all that we finally headed back to the bus.