This year had a lot of firsts for my wife and I when it came to our camping trips. Many times through the summer we find ourselves traveling back to a lot of familiar spots. The fact is, there are just a lot of state parks in the state of Michigan that we love. With the Great Lakes surrounding us and a number of larger inland lakes, it's not too hard to fall in love with just about every part of Michigan.
While our big trip to Wisconsin was probably the biggest shift for us this summer, we also mixed things up a bit by camping at four or five different state parks we have never visited before.
Sleepy Hollow State Park is one of those parks.
Despite the name, and the references to that other Sleepy Hollow in New York made famous by Washington Irving, the Sleepy Hollow in Michigan is far from scary.
The funny thing is, living where we do in Michigan, 90% of the time when I am looking to book a camping trip, the first thing I do is look north. There are plenty of campgrounds in the southern part of the state, but when you think about getting away for the weekend, you immediately think "north". Sleepy Hollow on the other hand is actually a bit south and west from where we live. It's been on my list for a while now to visit, but I've just never pulled the trigger mostly because of that stigma of not being north.
It's funny how our minds work like that sometimes huh?
Sleepy Hollow State Park sits on the shores of Lake Ovid which is a man made lake which was created when the Little Maple river was dammed back in the 1970's. It's actually a really impressive lake for being man made with a ton of fishing piers and other places to hang out and spend your time. We actually didn't spend too much time around the lake, but we did walk there one night to grab some photos of the sunset.
One of the coolest things about Sleepy Hollow State Park is the fact that it is only about a 45 minute drive away from our house, which is about half the time it takes to get to many of the other closest state parks to us in Michigan. This is one that I could see us making a quick drive over for a short weekend. The other cool thing about the park is the fact that many of the campsites are isolated from each other. Where many state park campgrounds are set up more like a trailer park or a parking lot, this one has a bit more privacy.
That privacy does come at a cost. Lake Ovid is near the small towns of Ovid and Elsie in Michigan and quite literally in the middle of nowhere. There is hardly any cellular service here, and data service is even more abysmal!
Honestly though, with views like this, who needs all of that. Okay, being able to check the weather would be nice. As well as finding a nice bar or pub close by that we could have a beer or two.
As we were sitting at our campsite watching the campfire, there was a path that led through the woods a short distance behind our site. We saw a constant stream of people walking to one of the many fishing piers that surround the lake. I'm not sure if anyone ever caught anything though. Sometimes that's not really the point with fishing anyway...
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
