devries-travels

[devries-travels]

Sleepy Hollow State Park

June 21, 2021

About a month after Leelanau we were itching to do a camping trip again. We had a cabin rental the last time but that wasn’t an option for this place.

Sleepy Hollow State Park is an area near Laingsburg, MI with its main feature being the sizable Lake Ovid in the center. It is also the closest State Park to where I live, being only about 20 min away. As opposed to Leelanau which was only hiking this one has specific areas for biking and horseback riding.

Setting up the tent was easy, it was just a pop-up pull-the-string-and-it’s-done endeavor. However when it was time to do the actual hike I got us turned around a couple times so we had to backtrack to the road to where we knew the trail started and went from there. The idea was to do the loop around the lake, which is a commitment of about 10 miles. The first half of it was through the forests and fields around the lake but it doesn’t really start showing views of the water until about halfway through after crossing Price Road that bridges over the narrowest part of the lake.

After that it has a lot of pretty amazing views including that of the Little Maple River. Past that and heading back North there’s a little island in the lake that has a trail that goes completely around it. The previous year a friend and I went across the lake on a paddle board and did that specific part of the trail unaware of the huge loop that we were doing this time around. We were also barefoot that time which was unfortunate considering the piles of horse leavings that are also all over the trail. And then he broke his toe hitting either a rock or root. Wearing proper shoes is definitely a necessity, which was not as much of a problem when my partner and I did it.

After that little piece of the trail our trip around the lake was pretty much over. And since we had never done that long of a hike before we were really exhausted and ended up heading to the beach area for the to cool off. Aries is always happy to go into the water and the sunsets at this park are always pretty stunning.

This is a place we will end up having gone to multiple times in 2022 but those are future stories.

[devries-travels]

Leelanau State Park

May 25, 2021

I have lived in Michigan since 2001. I had ventured to the bigger cities and spent a few summer days here and there on the beaches on the West coast of the state, but until this trip I had never been to anywhere North. Right before we left we got some very basic gear: a purple water bottle that maybe fits 20 ounces in it, and a small $5 backpack both from Five Below. So with that and some snacks we had the bare minimum to do a real hike.

That drive towards Traverse City is still burned into my memory. Seeing glimpses of the Manistee National Forest, being surprised by how beautiful the Grand Traverse Bay is…. I knew that it was going to be really beautiful when we got to our destination but I really had no idea what was in store for us.

We first decided to take a route that led to the lake after about a mile of hiking. I’ve seen Lake Michigan before but this was the clearest water I had seen in my life

Stunning, honestly, and we got to walk along the beach for a while before heading back to the trail. The problem is that to get down to this amazing beach we had to climb down a pretty sizeable dune. The way down is nothing, but climbing up a dune when you haven’t yet gotten used to physical activity is basically the worst thing possible.

Eventually we struggled our way up the dune back into the forest. This was such a magical place honestly. It was far enough into spring that a lot of the growth had already happened, bugs were everywhere but they mostly left us alone. And the trees? Absolutely gigantic.

To be fair now that I’m writing this I’ve seen a handful of bigger forests, but this is the first time I’ve seen something more striking than the woods around where I live. This is one park we spent the entire day doing every possible trail either by accident or sheer curiosity.

On the other side of the park also there is the beautiful but not that originally named Mud Lake. I feel like there are multiple Mud Lakes even just in Michigan. Even just in the Lower Peninsula if I remember correctly.

Eventually after many hills and discussing our lives over the last few weeks in the woods with barely anyone around to hear us (which is one of my favorite parts of all of this) we completed our trip around the park and stopped back at the beach at the bottom of the dune and watched the sunset.

That cloud formation actually ended up being a storm that hit right after we got back to camp.

I’ll honestly never forget this day as long as I live. It was before recording hikes became a thing, so I don’t know how much we actually did that day but it felt like a challenge and left me with a feeling that I would be wanting to do things like this for as long as I’m able to.

[devries-travels]

How This All Started

As it did for all of us, the pandemic of 2020 hit my life hard. The last few years before everything shut down were spent working for not enough money to fund my way more expensive than I should have let happen lifestyle of going out and hanging out with friends and/or whomever I could handle being around almost every night. I had just started a relationship with my now spouse Aries in August and we were spending almost every day together already, so when March’s lockdown hit it was pretty clear that we would be hunkering down together doing our best to avoid getting sick.

As it got warmer we spent a nice couple hours or so at a small but nice park in the middle of Lansing called Fenner Nature Center on the day before my birthday. That was the beginning of a new hobby that would both consume and enrich my life for the next few years (so far). That experience was unlike anything else, and it was one we tried to repeat a month later, at a bigger but still close by park at Lake Lansing North in Haslett, Michigan.

Those two places, even though at this point in my life are a couple of the easier ones I’ve been to, sparked up a whole idea of doing this thing further away and in bigger, more remote areas. Unfortunately for 2020, those two were where it ended. It would not be until the next year that we started seriously delving into camping and otherwise “roughing it” in the woods, wetlands, and coastlines of Michigan.

I am making this Tumblr as a chronicle of the story of one of my favorite things to do. Every picture is my own taken with my decent but not special iPhone camera whenever I felt inspired to record what was around me at the time.

Anyway, during that winter my partner had the idea to rent a cabin up in the very tip of what is Michigan’s pinkie finger past Traverse City. It would be my first state park and furthest from Lansing I had been in ages, but that’s for the next post.