More Amazing Things About Indian Lake State Park

There are several things that fit my goals by camping at Indian Lake State Park.  I prefer camping in Michigan's U.P., but many places require a very long drive for me on two-lane roads, which Yoopers call highways.  But Indian Lake is located just outside of Manistique, MI which is only an hour from the Mackinac Bridge, the gateway to the U.P.

Not only is it not so far away, the drive down U.S. 2 parallels the Lake Michigan shore, and every moment offers beautiful scenery.  If you have to pull a tin can on a narrow road to get to your destination, a view of a Great Lake takes away much of the stress.  Once you arrive in Manistique, there are actually gas stations and places to stop for coffee before the 5 minute drive out to the State Park.  Indian Lake is easy to find, and any camping next to a body of water is good camping.

After spending a day exploring Kitch-iti-kipi and an evening hunkering down during a storm, I awoke to a flooded campground and 40mph winds.  I don't think the flooding is typical, it was just a massive storm that dumped a lot of rain.  The temperature had dropped 30 degrees, so instead of a calm sunny day in August with temps in the 70's, I was greeted with a cloudy windy day in the 40's.  Big difference.  I had to put my awning in, which meant I had no protection from the rain that was coming, and a campfire was out of the question.  The wind would have carried the embers and potentially started an unwanted fire.  So, what to do with my day?  I visited the DNR ranger station, and was given some ideas.

Heading back to Manistique, I pulled into the parking area for the public beach on Lake Michigan.  Only a couple other cars were parked, and upon climbing over a small dune, I was greeted with a site more akin to Lake Huron than Michigan.  The beach looked awful, with debris piled up in small mounds.  It wasn't until I started down the boardwalk and came to an informational sign that I understood the truly unique source of the debris, not to be found anywhere else.

During the lumbering era of the late 1800's and early 1900's, lumber mills in the Manistique area deposited wood chips and sawdust in the Manistique River, which flows into Lake Michigan.  It is estimated that 5.1 million tons of sawdust (that's a lot of sawdust) washed into Lake Michigan, where it settled on the bottom.  Storms, water currents, and large vessels churn up this sawdust, and over 100 years later, the sawdust is still washing up on the shore at Manistique.


I was fascinated by this.  Taking my shoes off, I walked down the sandy dunes to the sawdust debris piled at the water's edge.  At first I was apprehensive about walking barefoot, imagining millions of tiny splinters embedding in my feet, but the moment I stepped onto the first mound, I was immediately transported to a natural spa.  The sawdust, soaked in water for over a century, felt like warm rum custard (or any kind of custard, I just prefer rum).  I sunk in about 4-5 inches, and it was so soft, creamy and warm!  Unlike mud, it didn't suck my feet under, and I was easily able to pull my feet out and walk some more.  I felt like a child discovering the beach for the first time, with a sun-warmed carpet on which to walk while the chilly wind whipped my hair.  I was completely enamored of the sawdust beach.

I found a piece of driftwood and sat down to take some pictures.  There was a storm brewing over the water, but it had not yet clouded the sun and I knew I had plenty of time before the tumultuous clouds reached the shore.  I watched a big ship loading it's passengers, stared up at the lighthouse, and marveled at the diamond-like quality of the surface of the water, with the sun shining on my back and a distant storm making its way toward Manistique from the south.

Even with the wind roaring around my head, I found a peacefulness, a serenity to the scene before me.  I was seeing Mother Nature in all her forms and experiencing the pleasant side effect of an unpleasant contamination of the lake.  My thoughts drifted, my body relaxed, when CRACK!  BOOM! startled me   in every single cell of my body.  Turning around, I saw a doozy of a storm had snuck up behind me, from the north.  It made the storm out over the water look pale in comparison.  My first thought was I should prepare to head back to the campground.  My second thought was "What's going to happen when these two storms meet each other?"  That got me moving.

I made it to the car just as the first rain drops started to fall, and by the time I pulled out to the road the rain was coming down in sheets.  Trees were bending over with the wind and lightning was flashing in every direction.  I couldn't see to drive, but wanted so much to get back to the tin can and make sure she was holding up.

It took me 30 minutes to drive 7 miles, and the two storms met as I pulled up next to the camper.  I didn't think it could get much worse, but I was wrong.  In the four steps it took me to reach the camper door, I was drenched, and when I opened the door the wind threatened to rip it off the hinges.  Safely inside, I changed into dry clothes and grabbed a book to wait it out.

It was only early afternoon, and the storm raged for three more hours.  By the time it was over, the campers at Indian Lake had torn awnings, blown away furniture, and a general mess to clean up.  As people slowly emerged from RV's and tents, we all greeted each other and helped put things right.  I had fared well, having put everything that was outside my camper in the back of my Yukon that morning.  It was still too windy to put anything back out, so I helped others while forlornly looking at my bare campsite.  Camping for me involves sitting by a fire, being outside, and enjoying nature.  The only thing left for me at that point was to stay outside.


I walked the entire campground to see the damage and take pictures.  I found a general day-use lodge, empty, and took some pictures while dreaming of what it would be like to live there, sans all the other campers.  A stone lodge on a lake had me planning where the living area would be, the kitchen, and mostly my bedroom, which would occupy the space of the current men's room with an incredible view of the lake.  It wasn't just that I love dreaming about my cabin in the woods on a bluff overlooking a lake, it also gave me a break from the relentless wind.  I found myself wishing I could start a fire in the massive stone fireplace and spend my evening there.

Leaving the lodge, I discovered the trail system at Indian Lake State Park.  What an amazing system of trails, well-marked, surrounded by tall pines and following the shoreline.  The wind was marginally less abusive in the trees, allowing me to walk for a couple of miles before looping back to the campground.  My camera never stopped clicking away as I had the trails to myself.  Apparently, I was the only camper crazy enough to go hiking in this weather.

Another stormy night ensued, but the next morning broke sunny, cold, and still windy.  I planned to hike the Hiawatha National Forest (which I'll write about later) before leaving the next day.  Locking up the tin can, I headed out for yet another adventure surrounding Indian Lake State Park, eager to embrace the sun and confident it was far too cold for the snakes to stalk me in the forest.

There is just so much to do when camping at Indian Lake!

Indian Lake State Park…Something for Everyone!

There are so many beautiful and fascinating places in America to explore!  Because my vintage Airstream needs to be treated with lots of tender loving care, I never get to see those places.  The old tin can just isn't up for long road trips.  The good news, though, is there are still lots of places right here in Michigan that I haven't seen, and the Mitten State offers endless opportunities for camping, lodging, outdoor recreation, and breathtaking scenery.  In just the last two years, Michigan has given me ice climbing, kayaking, mountain biking, hiking, mountain climbing, and winter survival skills.  Last summer I stopped in at Indian Lake State Park for one night, and ended up changing my travel plans to stay there four days.

Indian Lake State Park in Michigan's Upper Peninsula has something for everyone.  Looking for a Great Lakes Beach?  Got it.  Looking for the 4th largest inland lake in the U.P.?  It's there.  Don't have a camper?  Stay in a cabin.  Want to hike or kayak?  Done.

The campground itself is diverse, with a few sites offering privacy, and many suitable sites for families and friends to camp together.  It has the usual S.P. amenities of a modern campground with electrical hook-ups, water and dump station, clean bathrooms and showers, and a semi-modern area with electricity and vault toilets.  For those without camping equipment, modern cabins are available as well.  The landscape is a mix of wide-open spaces with tree-lined sites in between.  The entire campground sits on the south shore of 8400 acre Indian Lake, offering stunning sunsets and sweeping views of water and distant shores.  I found it is an excellent place to also watch an approaching storm.

But it was in venturing only short distances from the campground that I found all the gems of this trip.  First up was Kitch-iti-kipi.

The brochure I found at the campground said Kitch-iti-kipi is one of the U.P.'s Seven Natural Wonders (which makes me wonder what the other six are, and have I seen them?), calling it Mysteriously Awesome!  and a Mirror of Heaven.  It sounded a bit like a tourist trap, but the campground DNR ranger encouraged me to go, so I did.

A quick 7 mile drive had me pulling into the parking area of Palm Books State Park, which does not allow camping or fishing.  You'll find out in a bit why the no fishing thing could be a big deal to some people.  Walking down a very short path to the edge of the Big Spring, I got my first glimpse and was highly intrigued.

I have never seen water, or anything else for that matter, the color of Kitch-iti-kipi.  You know those sticks you can buy to throw in a bonfire and turn the flames colors?  It was like someone had thrown one of those in the water, except the informational plaque assured me the color was natural.  From the brochure I learned that the Big Spring is two hundred feet across and forty feet deep.  An even more amazing fact is over 10,000 gallons a minute gush from fissures in the underlying limestone at a year-round constant temperature of 45 degrees F.

Stepping onto the self-guided observation raft, I immediately saw a burst of sand from deep below, looking like a volcano eruption without the fire.  The sand swirled and rose, and I could actually see the water pushing up from below.  It was an awesome display of nature.

As if the color, depth, and eruptions aren't enough, there is an even more amazing feature of Kitch-iti-kipi; the trout.  Hundreds of massive trout swim in its depths, sometimes suspended in time, sometimes drifting lazily, and occasionally darting to and fro.  Looking down through the opening in the center of the raft, I could barely comprehend how deep the trout were below me, while being able to see every mark on them through crystal clear water.  I could only imagine that it would just about kill an avid fisherman to stand there and not drop a line!  But these trout are protected from sportsmen, which might explain their massive size.  Or perhaps its that the fresh water surging into the spring from deep in the earth provides the most healthy of environments for them.  All I know is the trout are magnificent!

I met a man as I was leaving the raft, who inquired about my camera.  We chatted, and it turns out he is a writer from a secret society in the middle of the desert.  Seriously.  He lives in a small community in the desert which its citizens prefer to keep a secret.  They love their little town and do not want its beauty to be ruined by interlopers.  He is writing a book about the flowers of the desert, but has been asked by his community not to publish it, for fear they will be found.  Only I could meet a secret writer from a secret town with a secret book.  If the man had not been so warm and genuinely nice, I might have been a little creeped out.

I visited the gift shop, and bought (on sale 60% off) a lap blanket for my friend Debbie.  It had a big bear on it, of which Debbie is terrified but now uses as a bear and people repellent.  I bought a matching one for myself.  I also left the gift shop happily licking away at an ice cream cone.  I do not normally have ice cream when camping in the U.P. so it was a big deal, trust me.

This morning, I came across a photo on the internet by U.P. photographer Tiffany Trepanier, of the observation platform at Kitch-iti-kip on a cold winter's day.  It looks much different, but what a beautiful photo!

Credit:  Tiffany Trepanier

After leaving the Big Spring and arriving back at Indian Lake State Park, I was rather dismayed to find the wind, which was pulling a massive summer storm across Lake Michigan, had destroyed my artfully arranged campsite.  My camp chair was in the woods, my vase of wildflowers shattered and flowers strewn everywhere, and the ground mat had blown beneath the tin can.  The first flash of lightning lit up the sky, so I went straight to the tin can to wait out the storm.  It was a wild night, with winds rocking the Airstream and thunder echoing, but I stayed warm and dry while I slept deeply.

The next morning I stepped out of the tin can to find myself in a shallow lake that was not there the day before.  The single backpacking tent on the site next to me was floating in the flooded field.  Had it not been for the spectacular sunrise I was greeted with, I might have been worried.  As it was, the 40 mph winds would most likely dry the campground out by noon, and I had more places to go!  Check out my next post in which I will introduce you to centuries-old sawdust, a sneaky storm, and Hiawatha.  Like I said, something for everyone!