With the handful of posts I have already written about Hartwick Pines State Park, the one piece I haven't really covered yet is the actual campground. It's a pretty unique place as far as campgrounds in Michigan go. For one, it's one of the few state parks in Michigan that has full hookups at some of the campsites. That number is slowly increasing, but as of right now, Hartwick Pines stands ahead of the pack.
If you aren't familiar with the camping lingo, let me break it down for you. When most people think of camping, they are probably thinking what we call "rustic" or "dry" camping. Just a tent, no water, no electricity, dig a hole in the ground to take a crap, stuff like that. Most state park campgrounds in the state only have electric at the sites. Those are the ones that we usually take our trailer to. You can put a tent on those sites, a pop up camper, a trailer, or a Class A motorhome, anything goes.
There are a few private campgrounds that offer electric and water at your site, but we don't visit those very often. Then you have full hook up sites, these have electric, water, and sewer all at your site. If you have a tent, it's kind of pointless to pay the extra money for a full hook up site as you won't likely use it.
What makes Hartwick (not Hardwick as many people incorrectly call it) Pines special is that it has these "luxury" full hook up sites in the center of the park, but it also has some really secluded wooded electric only sites on the outer perimeter of the park. We've camped in both types of sites here and we enjoy them both.
Hartwick Pines is honestly in the middle of nowhere, so even with the modern conveniences you never forget that you are away from it all. Cellular service is spotty there, so plan on being "unplugged" if you decide to visit. The actually park is just shy of 10,000 acres. That give you plenty of trails, roads, lakes, and other areas to explore. It's honestly a bit crazy just how massive it is.
In fact, when we visited, I had to stop into the camp office to take care of something and they had this map on the counter. I didn't realize the park extended across the road into the other area that is enclosed in the green boxes. We ended up taking a nice "scenic" drive on the orange path that they have highlighted there.
It started off as a fairly decent maintained dirt road that you see in the photo above.
Eventually, it turned into something a bit more narrow. I didn't have to put my truck in four wheel drive at all, but I was thankful I had the option should it become necessary. There were a few times I thought a tree limb was going to snap my radio antenna off, but other than that, it was a pretty fun drive. It took us over the AuSable River as you see in the last photo above. Shout out to 
It was a spur of the moment thing for us to take that drive on our last day, but I was really happy that we did. It turned out to be a lot of fun. I'd actually like to do more stuff like that, but the problem is you have to be careful because if you bust up your truck "two tracking", you don't have a way to get yourself or your trailer home...
We ate pretty good over the weekend too. I've posted about it before, but I can't tell you how much of a game changer this Blackstone griddle has been for our camping trips. It absolutely slays at breakfast, but it is also versatile enough that we can cook pretty much every meal on it if we wanted to.
My mother in law made a big batch of fried rice for us before we headed out for the weekend, so we marinated some chicken in soy sauce, honey, garlic, oil, and apple cider vinegar then cooked it off on the flat top. Along with some sauteed veggies and homemade yum yum sauce, it was so amazing!
This little chipmunk was a bold fellow actually running across my foot at one point while I was sitting under the awning reading. Scared the crap out of me! He/she was cute though and had somehow managed to make a little house under our fire pit. I thought sure the fire would drive them out, but the heat must have not penetrated that far. Either that or they actually liked the warmth.
This guy busted me up and I just had to take a photo. His campsite was actually just across the road, they pulled in with an old motorhome earlier in the day. I'm not kidding when I tell you he sat at this table on the empty site across the road from probably about 5 in the afternoon until 9 at night. It started with him being on a long phone call, then he just sat on his phone. Maybe he was watching a sporting event, I don't know, but it just seemed funny that he spent so much time away from his family. Either they are the worst or he is, who knows.
I thought maybe it was an important business call, but it was on Saturday night, so who knows.
Between the sun and the moon, we had some pretty amazing views of the sky. It wasn't quite as clear as sometimes we have went where you could see a million stars, but it was still pretty impressive. I'm hoping as the summer starts to come to a close the wildfire smoke from Canada will subside a little and we can get back to some of the nighttime skies I am used to while camping.
If you ever get the chance, Hartwick Pines is definitely worth saying you visited at least once in your life. I don't think you will be disappointed!
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
