After visiting many of the state parks in Michigan, it seems there are a handful that we keep coming back to time and time again. Aloha State park in the small town of Aloha, MI is definitely one of those. Located on the east coast of Mullet lake, it offers pretty spectacular sunsets every night like you can see in the photo above.
There is a lot to love about the park and it is more than just the sum of the views. It is a relatively large park with a couple hundred sites available for people to camp on. They just added full hookup sites to the far end of the campground, so you can be pretty self contained if you want to be and your travel trailer allows it.
One of the things I love about this campground isn't actually in the campground...
Just outside the campground is a little store called the Aloha Store. It might not look like much from here, but there is absolute magic inside of this place. Trust me!
Maybe a picture from a different angle will help you figure it out.
If you are thinking it is the "Live Bait" sign in the window, you are totally wrong. Nope, it's the sign just to the right that mentions "Fresh Donuts Made Here".
That's right, every morning there are a couple older ladies working in the back of the place making fried cakes for all of the campers and locals to enjoy. They have a huge selection available, you just need to decide if you want 1 or 24!
I decided to take it a little easy and stick with a box of six on our first morning at the campground. They aren't very big, but they pack a lot of flavor and trust me when I say they are absolutely divine fresh out of the fryer!
I think on this occasion, my favorite was the one in front with the vanilla frosting on it and nuts. My wife has a lot more will power than I do when it comes to sweets, so she was fine just having half of the chocolate one in the back. The cinnamon and sugar ones were pretty fantastic too. The powered sugar donut actually had a bit too much sugar on it if you could believe it.
As you can see, they are all the round fried cake style donuts, none of that yeast based stuff here. Although I prefer yeast donuts over friend cakes, these are still super fantastic. It's pretty rare that I would ever turn down a donut regardless of the dough. They did have come coconut topped ones that I did steer clear of!
One year my wife and I were lucky enough to get a campsite right on the water. Unfortunately, it was also the windiest we have ever seen it at Aloha, so we weren't able to really enjoy being outside our trailer. Ever since then, we try to get a site on the other side of the "road" from the lake. It still gives us a decent view and the wind is a little less intense.
My wife went for a bike ride one morning and when she came back she said you won't believe this, these people had their dogs down on the beach. At most state parks you are prohibited from having pets or glass bottles on the beach. Some have a separate "pet beach", but not all of them.
When we drove back to actually spend time at the beach my wife said that one dog is still there.
After realizing the dog hadn't moved at all, she exclaimed "I am an idiot", and we quickly realized why when we got down to the shore. They placed this cutout on the sand so they could keep the seagulls and geese away from crapping all over the beach...
We all had a good laugh at our own expense and enjoyed a nice time sitting and the beach, swimming and drinking some beers/seltzers.
At night I was able to play catch using my Frisbee with our nieces daughter. She has always had a really good natural throw and I enjoy playing with her because I don't have to do too much chasing. She was a little rusty, but we still had a good time playing.
Notice anything special about this particular disc?
I know it is probably hard to see in this photo, but if you look really closely, you will see that the disc lights up. It has a small battery on the underside and LED lights in the center and down the "spines". It looks really awesome at night when you are playing catch with someone!
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, my buddy came camping with us and he got the site right next to us. He pulled his trailer in versus backing it in so he could be facing us.
Like I said, the one that that always keeps you coming back to Aloha (besides the donuts) is the sunsets. We had a couple of really great ones while we were there.
Besides the one at the top, I also tried to mess with the white balance on my phone in pro mode to see if I could come up with something better.
Here is one extreme
And then the other.
I really think the original photo turned out better. Trust me when I say the colors were much more intense than you can actually see in these photos. I had read that adjusting the white balance helps you capture more of them, but I honestly chalk this failure up to my lack of skill, not a problem with the camera.
Finally, I tried for one last selfie of us and the sunset, but it was hard to get it to focus on either us or the sunset, so we ended up being a little dark!
Our last day a little bit of a storm rolled in, but we weren't too worried about it. It ended up being pretty mild and our friend pointed out that a tornado has only touched down once north of the 45th parallel so we should be good. Since we were a good half hour to 45 minutes north of that parallel which runs through Gaylord, MI we knew we were safe!
Aloha State Park is a bit off the beaten path, but it is totally worth the trip if you are in this part of the state!
Come for the donuts, stay for the sunsets!
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