Tawas State Park

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To follow up on my previous post, this was the start of our camping portion of our trip. After a good visit with family and a night out on town in downtown Traverse City, we headed completely across state, from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron.

Tawas State Park is located at the end of a peninsula in East Tawas. Surrounded on both sides by Lake Huron it is quite beautiful, and offers a lighthouse and beautiful beaches. You can rent bikes at the office and follow many paved bike paths, including one that heads off the peninsula toward Tawas. Our first night we stayed in site 130, which is located on a bend with a wooded backdrop. It was a spacious site that wasn't as cramped as a lot of others in the campground due to close proximity to neighbors. It was a grassy site as well, which there weren't a large amount of in the park. Most have an abundance of black sand, but are overall shady and wooded. We were also one site away from the paved bike/walking path leading to the lighthouse and beaches. A short walk to either side of our site will find you at both of the two mini cabins, and the two larger cabins. The mini cabins are described as being located on a "pond", which is really a dried up looking marsh. I can't be certain if this is due to season and weather conditions. The larger cabins are located on Lake Huron, with nice decks and a nice beach setting. The sunset from that spot is spectacular.

While the likelihood of a bear wandering through your camp during the night here is, well, quite doubtful, you may find yourself face to face with other intruders. Around midnight or so a skunk stalked quietly and unannounced past our picnic table. Luckily for this site our fire pit, where we were still sitting of course, was a good distance from the picnic table. It walked through and onto sites past us, one of which would be our site the second night of our stay.

In the morning we made more animal friends. Barry told me to look behind myself. A chipmunk had run up to me, apparently no stranger to the discarded items of humans. I spent the rest of the morning luring him back in to camp. Turns out, there was two of them running back and forth to snatch up my bread. Had I superhuman speed, I could have picked one of them up multiple times, lol.

During this day we decided to bike down to the lighthouse and beach. So we hooked up our bike trailer for it's first ride! We packed the back full of our towels, baby items, lotions/ect, and Autumns floater (a cute ladybug one borrowed from cousin Emma). Autumn loved the ride! And even passed out a few times. She loved when I'd ride beside the trailer and wave through the window. The wonder, amusements, and excitement of children, especially babies, never ceases to make your day, until they get cranky in the evening as they fight sleep. . .lol.

The beach was beautiful, and abundant in people. The great lakes always make you feel just as insignificant as the oceans, and exude just as much power and beauty that always makes it hard to turn away, no matter how long you've stood next to it looking out into endless horizon. The scene was added to even more by Tawas Point grill that played beachy music and an enclosed pavilion, both located up on the boardwalk section. I took some beautiful pictures of Autumn with her sunhat and anchor shirt I'd been dying to put on her for some time. One picture was landscape style with some of the most beautiful dune grass I'd ever seen. In the picture, as well as in person, it looks painted by the hands of an amazing artist. Although I blew up her floater to play with we didn't take her in the water as it was too windy for her first swim, and after not much time had passed the sand became too much for her as well. It was sticking to her eyes and cheeks, and could even be found in her mouth. It was extremely hard to wipe away a majority of it, especially with her hands making there way back to those areas continuously. So we left then, and stopped for a short time at the dog friendly beach along the paved path. The west side of the peninsula, although more calm, seems to be the mucky-ish side, so we just sat on the bench for a moment observing the bay, then headed back to our new site.



On our second night we had to move to site 52. We went to attain the site we set up in our first day for a second night before checkout and someone had already reserved it. The new site was close enough to drag our tent to so it wasn't a large hassle, but the grassy layout of our first site was nice when you have a crawling baby. This site was mostly black sand and we had to create an enclosure to keep the baby from as much clean up as possible (for those with kids I'm sure the difficulty isn't hard to picture). We have a small play tent for Autumn that is light blue with a pink baby deer on the side (so cute!). We put down a tarp with her tent on one end and her playpen on the other, and put our bags and boxes around the edge to create a barrier. Her playpen has what we refer to as a "doggy door", a hole you can unzip which was used for diaper storage in the early baby stages.

Things were a bit more cramped in this site, and our neighbors were quite close. However, we did have a better view of the water and sunset through the open space between the two larger cabins. We sat quietly in the setting sunlight reading our books by our fire. It was quite the highlight of our evening I felt. Even our neighbors were sucked into the peaceful depths of their newspaper, which was nice considering there was a site discrepancy earlier in the day (the neighbors already located a site over had the new arrivals fire pit surrounded with their items, and also had their picnic table. The park officers moved their table over since they were gone at the time, but it turns out they were supposed to have that second site for another night. Some mistake on the park sounds like.)

After this nice, yet non-eventful stay, we were ready for our adventure to continue to bigger and better things. We drove down to the parking lot of the beach we had visited the day before, and I ran up to the store to grab us each an ice cream (Barry a root beer float and I a sundae cone), as well as a flattened penny souvenir. . .something I have collected very many of (but that's a blog for another time). We said our farewells, and headed North. . .

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Photos

How to Utilize a Jeep
Our camp site the first night.

Dune Grass
The beautiful painted-like dune grass of Tawas Peninsula beach.

Make Shift Play Yard
One way to keep the baby off of black sand when you're lacking a grassy camp site. . .

Sunset over Tawas Bay
The view of the sunset from our campsite on the second night.