Sure, sure, I already mentioned that @mrsbozz and I spent one of our mornings playing disc golf while we were visiting the Ionia State Recreation Area. If you want to read all about it, you can check out the post here.
The truth is, we were really there to camp, the disc golf was just an added bonus for me. This was our first time in Ionia and it was quite different from many of the parks that we have visited in the past.
Being a little further south in Michigan than we usually camp, Ionia State Recreation Area was actually a lot more hilly than we would have guessed.
We should have known this was going to be a unique trip right from the get go. The drive over was pretty interesting as it was mostly back roads taking us through vast areas of farm country. Normally when we travel, you hop on the expressway and you barrel along until you reach your destination.
Not so on the way to Ionia. It was more like drive two miles west and then turn south. Drive five more miles then head west again. Four miles then another turn to the south. Rinse and repeat for about two hours until we finally reached our destination.
As I said, it takes you through a lot of farm country and many of the farmers in the middle of the state have embraced the growing wind energy market. The photos above are of a wind turbine that was getting ready to be assembled.
Here is one final photo of that. Hats off to my wonderful navigator and road photographer @mrsbozz. She is really getting the hang of this. I might have to start giving her some beneficiary rewards...
As I said, lots of backroads with interesting twists, turns, nature, and buildings. I was actually surprised to find some of these photos that @mrsbozz took as I was gathering my material for this post.
So as I said, about two hours later we finally reached the sprawling 4500 acre property that makes up the Ionia Rec Area. I probably mentioned this was our first time camping here, so we had zero clue what to expect.
We were immediately taken aback by the two mile drive it took just to get back to the camping area. I can only think of a couple other parks where you have to drive so far just to reach the camping area.
As I mentioned yesterday, one of the main draws of Ionia Rec Area is Session Lake. It is a dammed river that makes up the lake and there is a point on your drive back to the campground where you drive over the dam/levy. That's were the photos above were taken.
The beach area at Session Lake is pretty impressive. We noticed there were workers from the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) there every morning grooming the area and the sand to make it ready for the people who would be enjoying it later that day.
They had a separate kayak rental area and there was a camp store with goodies like ice cream and all other kinds of cool stuff in the building you see above.
We had a nice camp site that would have offered a nice view of the lake if there hadn't been a jungle of undergrowth blocking the view. I'm not kidding either. This stuff was thick and full of pickers and nettles. It wasn't anything that you would want to trifle with.
Speaking of things not to be trifled with, it wasn't until we were parked and fully set up that we noticed this bald faced hornet nest hanging in the tree right above our travel trailer.
I was actually up on the roof doing some caulking when @mrsbozz noticed it. It's a good thing she pointed it out otherwise I probably would have bumped right into it and fallen off the roof of the trailer as the hornets stung me.
They were actually pretty docile and we never saw a single one away from the nest. We told the DNR workers about it and they said they would take care of it after we were gone.
During the day on Friday (after our round of disc golf), we ran to a local farmers market (which I will write more about another time) and grabbed some local sweet corn. I decided to try cooking it on my Blackstone flat top.
It went really well with the chicken cheesesteaks that we made for dinner that night.
I sliced up the onions and peppers really thin so they would cook up quickly and kind of melt in your mouth when you ate them. I also cut the chicken really thin so it would cook quickly and thoroughly on the flat top.
After a good season on both the chicken and veggies I shoved them together and let the flavors start blending together.
Finally, I threw some Carolina gold (mustard based) BBQ sauce on the chicken and veggies and then I put some slices of Swiss cheese on top. The end result was nothing short of delicious.
Paired with the sweet corn we bought, it was almost the perfect meal. I can't begin to tell you how amazing fresh sweet corn is. They say that sweet corn starts to loose its sweetness as soon as you pull it from the stalk, so you are racing against time to enjoy it at its best.
Saturday was a great day for food as well. After playing another round of disc golf (stay tuned for that), we had a quick breakfast before checking out the nearby town of Lowell, and finally ending up back in Ionia, MI.
Ionia is actually a pretty large town for being out in the middle of farm country. They have a couple of large prisons on the outskirts of town and then the other end of town has all of the big box stores that you would expect in a large city.
They even have a store called Farm Depot that was beyond anything I have ever seen before. Think Tractor Supply, but 10x bigger. They actually had a tractor showroom. Combines sitting out in the parking lot for sale. Don't get me wrong, I have drive by my fair share of tractor sale lots, but this was above and beyond all of that.
There are only three locations in the state of Michigan from what I could gather and if you get a chance to visit one of them, you should.
The downtown area of Ionia is quite charming as you can see in the photo above.
As much as we enjoy driving around and exploring the area, some of the best views from our trip came from right at our campsite. I can't help but think how much better these photos would have been if we had been able to see the lake, but I honestly can't complain.
Near the camping area we stayed in, there was also and equestrian camping area. People could drive in with their trailers and horses and tether them right at their site and then ride on designated trails with their horses. It was pretty cool. They also had an equestrian show area that @mrsbozz and I drove by at the state park.
All that being said, Ionia probably wouldn't be one of our first choices for camping in the future, but it was a nice area and I am glad we gave it a chance and checked it out. It's a quite beautiful park with a ton to offer.
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