Our last stop before reaching Mackinaw City for the summer was Nichols Lake. About mid-state in Michigan, it’s located toward the western side of the state, in the Huron-Manistee National Forest. Our first word of warning…if you ever decide to visit, DO NOT trust Google Maps to get you there! We found ourselves on a narrow dirt road, in a residential neighborhood. An extremely uneasy prospect when you’re driving a big rig. Thankfully the road went in a loop back out to the highway, and we found some very friendly locals to point us in the right direction. According to the locals, Google Maps sends a lot of visitors into their neighborhood.
We arrived on the opening day of camping season and had the campground all to ourselves, other than the camp hosts. The trees were still barren from winter, but over the course of the week we spent there, we could watch them bloom and change from day to day. By the time we departed for Mackinaw City, the trees had filled in nicely.
Since the North Country National Scenic Trail passes through the campground, we spent some of our time segment hiking part of this 4,600 mile trail that stretches from New York to North Dakota.
In the evenings, we would enjoy the sandy beach along the lake, or venture out with our fishing poles to try to catch some dinner. Second word of warning…the bushes along the lake are infested with ticks!!! When we got back to camp, we inspected our clothes, our cooler and our fishing gear. They were all loaded with the blood-sucking little critters, which we meticulously picked off and threw into the fire. Thank goodness our camp hosts had left for Ann Arbor and there was no one else in the campground, because we stripped off all our our tick infested clothing and left it outside.
One evening, two young men ventured into our campsite. They were on an overnight bicycle trip and had run out of drinking water. They said they had $6 cash in their pockets and were willing to give it to us in exchange for a drink. We filled their bottles with ice and water, and gave them half a dozen of our water bottles. (We let them keep their $6). They were extremely grateful, mostly that they wouldn’t have to call their wives in disgrace.
Camping at Nichols Lake was primitive. The sites didn’t have any utilities, and since it was still cold at night, they hadn’t turned on the water in the campground for the season yet. It gave us a chance to try our hands at dry camping once again, and provided a perfect, quiet rest before beginning a very busy summer in Mackinaw City.
