Despite the plentiful selection of state parks and campgrounds to visit in Michigan, it's always a bit surprising that we keep coming back to the same ones. I think there is a variety of reasons this is the case. Some parks are just about impossible to get into, so we don't even try. Others are closer in proximity to where we live, so depending on the weekend that makes a difference. Finally, some are just pretty awesome parks.
If you jump over to the Worldmappin site, you will find this isn't the first post I have written about Tawas Point State Park.
@mrsbozz and I actually have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this park. As you will see from the photos, the setting is absolutely beautiful. It sits just East of the town of Tawas and juts out into Lake Huron. It has some of the nicest beaches on the shores of Lake Huron and the natural harbor inside the point brings boaters from all over the country.
Unfortunately, due to the popularity of the area, it brings a lot of people to the park and that is one of our biggest issues with this campground. While large, the sites are quite close together with very little privacy. Many folks don't follow the rules that have been put in place for everyone's safety and enjoyment, and it just gets a bit loud and crazy at times.
I've seen several accidents happen in this park and on our most recent trip, we had an old couple in a motorhome playing EDM music at an extremely loud volume well into the late hours of the night.
Despite all of that, we continue to find ourselves back at this park at least once every other year. The friends that we camp with frequently really love this park and there is a lot of stuff for the kids to do. It's also fairly close to home and you don't need to take any interstates to get to it which can be nice with busy weekend traffic. We were supposed to bring our nephew on this trip again, but the medical issues @diamonddave was having caused us to change our plans last minute.
Our friends cancelled their site for the weekend and since they weren't coming with their young son, we decided not to bring our nephew. Even we weren't sure we were going to come on this trip in case we needed to go sit with diamonddave's wife in the hospital.
We have visited this park in the fall when there are generally less people out and about in the campgrounds, but the problem is given it's location out on the point, you often get some pretty intense winds in the fall. I remember one year we camped here and it was so cold and windy the whole weekend we couldn't even sit out around the fire.
Tawas offers a wide variety of places to visit as you will see in my upcoming posts. There is a little pizza place in town called G's that is one of our favorites. They have the most amazing breadsticks!
One of the highlights of the park is the day use area. It has a vast stretch of beach along the shores of Lake Huron along with the cool lighthouse you see above, a picnic area, playground, camp store, and lots of trails to walk along.
Given the winds that I mentioned earlier, this park is very popular with kite surfers and people flying traditional kites as well. In fact, at one point they had a small kite shop down by the lighthouse where you could purchase them to fly. I am not sure if that is still the case.
Again, given the location of this park out on a point, it also makes it very easy to catch both amazing sunrises and sunsets. @mrsbozz and I have walked along the path to the day use area many times and I always have to stop at the same point to get some photos of the sun coming up over Lake Huron.
We tried to relax as much as possible on this recent trip, but there were a few things that had us on edge. Most specifically our friend who was in the hospital. We were expecting to have to pack up at any moment and rush home to be with him. It really wasn't looking good.
We also had some neighbors behind our site who decided to go to the beach all day and leave food and other items out at their campsite. I was trying to take a nap, but I had to take a few photos. I'm not sure if you can see it too well, but in the photo above there are at least a dozen birds, two squirrels, and a chipmunk foraging through the boxes and bags of food they left sitting out.
We also had this large willow tree on our site that loomed right over our travel trailer. I grew up around willow trees like this, so I know how fragile they can be when storms come through. Luckily, we had pretty nice weather over the weekend, but if a strong enough storm had come through, our trailer likely would have been demolished and us along with it!
The trip certainly wasn't all bad though. I made these smashed cinnamon rolls on the Blackstone griddle and they were awesome!
We also had a fairly large site despite our neighbors being so close to us. I don't think I would pick this campsite again mainly because of the tree, but size-wise it is one of the better ones in the park.
It has become popular with some campers to bring these new laser lights with them. They basically just point the light up into a tree if there is one close and it makes all of the flashing points of light that you see in the photo above.
It's kind of a cool effect if you ever get the chance to see it. It's also not as intrusive as you might think. The lights just kind of dance on the leaves as they blow in the wind and as I said, it gives off a really cool effect.
There is usually at least one person at most campgrounds that has something like this set up.
Tawas Point State Park is definitely a must visit if you ever find yourself on the East side of Michigan. It's a short drive from town out to the park, but the views and the surroundings are absolutely amazing!
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