Arriving in St Ignace

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The drive from Brimley State Park to Straits State Park was pretty non-eventful. It is a quick drive down I-75 to St Ignace Michigan. This is the town on the south edge of the Upper Peninsula just before crossing over the Mackinaw Bridge to lower Michigan.

Straits is a really nice park and campground but it does border I-75 so it gets fairly loud at times with all the traffic. I was a bit surprised with how much traffic there is, but I suppose since it is the only bridge across, maybe I shouldn't have been.

There are lots of trails in the park and with it being up high over the bridge, there are quite a few observation spots. We went out one night to see what the bridge looks like lit up. I might need to try a night sky shot with the bridge visible.

Looking South Across Bridge

View From Overlook

From Campground's Beach

Night View from Overlook

The North Country Trail runs thru the park before crossing the bridge to the lower part of Michigan. But about 15 miles east of here, the NCT has a string of geocaches along it. They are part of the same series we had done back up near Brimley when we got caught by a sudden rain. We decided to try our luck again and headed towards Brevort Lake which is part of Hiawatha National Forest. It is a very pretty area and the trail was in good shape with gentle rolling hills.

View Along NCT

Overlooking Brevort Lake

There is a primitive campground at the lake and from the looks of it, the lake itself is very shallow for 20 or more feet out. We ended up doing an out and back hike of just over 7 miles while finding 11 caches. After enjoying our picnic lunch with a great view of the lake. We started to head back with the intention of trying another round of disc golf at a place we had seen listed in our travel literature. But when we got there we couldn't seem to find the course! We followed several of the trails thru a very wooded area but never found a course.  Given how thick the woods were, it may have been just as well since we likely would have lost all our discs to the woods.

As we drove along US Route 2, we are right on the shores of Lake Michigan. The winds were really whipping today and the waves were tremendously big. We stopped at a couple spots to just check them out (oh and find a couple caches too).

Wind Whipped Waves

At Water's Edge