2018 Road Trip – Day 5: Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park

It was really a relief to stay put today and not have to pack everything back into the truck. There is so much more to explore in Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park that I don’t imagine we’ll even get that much time to relax. That’s too bad, because I’ve brought a few library books along and I’m barely making a dent in them.

Today we decided to hike around the Presque Isle Scenic Area, which was clear on the other side of the park from our campsite. It was actually about a 15-20 minute drive through the park just to get to our hiking location. This really is a huge state park! The Presque Isle hike is not for the hiking novice and I recommend you taking hiking sticks if you have them. There are times when the “path” really doesn’t exist and you are climbing loose rocks, along a ridge, next to a steep drop, scampering up tree root “stairs” like some kind of mountain goat, or carefully making your way across the wiggly rocks scattered across the front of a waterfall. The only way you know you’re still on the “trail” sometimes is to look for the trees with the blue dots on them and keep moving towards the next one. I brought along my really nice set of two hiking sticks, so we split them up and each used one. If you can manage it though, the hike offers a lot of diversity and is well worth the effort. We got to see the waterfalls along the river, but also spent some time rock hunting along the shore of Lake Superior. We got a toe in, but not much more, because Lake Superior is a VERY cold lake, even in the end of July.

After a brief afternoon nap, we spent the sunset hour at the Summit Peak Scenic Area, where we were able to watch the sun set majestically over Lake Superior. The tower at Summit Peak is the tallest point in the entire state park and offers up some amazing views of everything the park has to offer. As a BeachBody Coach, I was looking forward to the opportunity to do some of the BeachBody on Demand yoga videos I had stored offline on my phone in some remote locals. The top of the Summit Peak tower provided just that opportunity, and just enough room for both my fiancé and myself to get our Yoga on while we enjoyed the colorful sunset. At one point, the Lord of the Rings fan in my was completely thrilled to clearly see the fires of Mount Doom clearly depicted by Mother Nature in her evening display.

If you’re going to the top of the tower to watch the sunset, make sure to bring along a flashlight, and maybe a light jacket, for the trek back to the car, because without much light pollution, it gets dark and chilly very quickly on the trail once that sun goes down. We headed back to camp to make a nice warm fire, eat a little supper and get a good night sleep before we hit the road again in the morning.

 

 

Road tripping again: The dreaded planning process

We really enjoyed our road trip last year, especially all of the amazing new sites we got to see, so we’ve been chatting about taking another road trip this year. My fiancé likes to be exceptionally spontaneous and I’m more of a planner. To make this work, he gives me a budget and a general theme or location for the trip. I then go to town researching the areas we are considering and how that will fit with our goals and budget. We don’t usually pre=book anywhere to stay along the way, so we can play it by ear as we go. This enables us to stay longer in areas we like and not waste precious time in areas that aren’t holding our interest. It also comes with some challenges though, especially when things are booked and we have to drive further than expected to find lodging for the evening.

This road trip proves to be exciting and challenging at the same time. We plan to road trip for 10-13 days around the perimeter of the state of Michigan, visiting state parks along the great lakes. We have thrown in an added challenge in that we will be camping for most of the trip. This means that every time we want to move locations (almost daily), we will need to tear down camp and then make sure we arrive at our next location early enough in the day to have light to set up camp again. It also means planning our food ahead of time. Our diet since the juice fast has been drastically different than our previous camping adventures have been and I need to rethink our camping food choices to find something that works with our new diet. Our entire budget for the 10-13 days is only $1500-1750.

I began by trying to find out which state parks in Michigan might have something interesting to offer that we can’t see elsewhere. There are over 100 state parks in Michigan, so we obviously can’t visit them all. We live in Southwest Michigan, so we have already decided we won’t spend a lot of time on the western side of the state, since we can get to most of those parks as a day or weekend trip. The same is true of the southeastern corner of the state, below Detroit. So, we will focus the bulk of our time in the upper peninsula and the northeastern corner of the state. I have compiled a map of 36 state parks, plus other attractions, that we might be interested in visiting.

Next step is budgeting. I’ve calculated basic driving distance between select points in the state and determined we will probably drive about 1500-2000 miles and our vehicle gets about 20 mpg; this means we will need about $300 for gas alone. Our basic admission to the state parks is free because of the license plate I mentioned, but we still have ot pay to stay overnight. Camping fees in the state parks vary from $17-35/night, so I’ve budgeted $30/night for 13 nights, totaling $360. Our menu is pretty simple also. I’ll make rice and quinoa ahead of time and bring canned beans for dinner. Since it’s summer, we will stop at farmers markets along the road and pick up fruits and veggies to supplement. For lunch we’ll have rice cakes and peanut butter with fruit on top. Since I’m a BeachBody coach, we’ll have Vanilla Vegan Shakeology for breakfast each day. The powder is easy to mix with water and keeps you full for a few hours. Our grocery budget for all of this (minus Shakeology, because I already have it) is $260. We also have 2 meat days each week. I don’t really like taking steak in the cooler, so I’ve budgeted $180 for us to eat in restaurants on our meat days. This leaves us $400-650 for miscellaneous spending like hotels (if it’s cold or rainy), extra restaurant nights, admission to other attractions, etc. I don’t count souvenirs in the budget; if we decide to buy them, they are extras.

BUDGET $1500-1750

• $300 – fuel
• $360 – camping fees
• $260 – groceries
• $180 – restaurants
• $400-650 misc.

After all of my planning, I can see that our trip is actually doable and looks like it will be fun and full of new sights and adventures. When I told my fiancé it was a go, he decided we should leave in 4 days! I already have a camping packing list to work from (I’m a planner), so it won’t be too hard to get things ready in time. Fortunately for my fiancée, my obsessive planning allows him to be as free and spontaneous as he wants to be. This is why we work so well together.