Yesterday we woke up from our first night camping at the Fort Wilkens State Park in Michigan. We had a slower morning and breakfast. We then walked down to the historic Fort part of the state park. It was fun to explore for a bit while it was still decently cool outside.
Fort Wilkens was built in the late 1800’s but wasn’t used for long. The Fort is very well maintained and the boys ended up getting some mini-donuts from the gift/snack shop.
After our walk around the Fort, we walked back to our campsite for lunch. Not gonna lie, it’s been kinda nice being solely responsible for food/meals again. I prepped the rice while we were still at the Hayward KOA.
Having a starch prepped makes meal time super fast. I smashed up 1/2 a can of chickpeas with the sriracha Mayo and made our favorite sushi bowls with the rice getting some rice vinegar/sugar/salt mixture added to season plus all the VEGGIES and some salad mix!
Jackson had some Easy Mac, kiwi, apple sauce squeezie, and a granola bar. Amelia had her gtube feed and pepperoni.
After lunch, we walked from our campsite over to Lake Superior. As you can see from the map below, we were camping between Lake Superior and Lake Fanny Hooe.
We first planned on kayaking on both, but Lake Superior was obviously more windy and wavy and wouldn’t have been as nice or fun.
The short walk from our campsite to this beach was definitely worth it. We hung out here for quite awhile.
Peanut definitely loves the water! It wasn’t t warm enough to go swimming in either lake though.
While we were enjoying our relatively vacant beach… DJ realized/discovered Jackson didn’t know how to skip rocks. So, a full-on lesson followed with lots of giggles and sass.
Since a lot of the rocks on the beach were quite smooth and flat, Jackson and I both made a balanced rock stack.
Messi loved every minute at the beach. He is doing so well on this trip!
After a while, we moved down the beach a bit and found some sand. Amelia attempted to write her favorite words in it, but it was dry so her letters didn’t show up very well.
Messi rediscovered how much he likes digging in the sand and dug a couple frenzied holes with encouragement from Jackson.
Such a funny little nugget of a puppy! Love him!
After the beach, we attempted to take Amelia’s BOB stroller on the nature trail next to the beach for a little bit. It somewhat worked until we hit a patch with a lot of roots.
I’ve been oogling a hiking cart that is just hitting the market from a company called Hucklebery Hiking that I think we will purchase once we get back to Virginia.
Doesn’t it look awesome? I think it would allow us to take some more epic hiking trips with Amelia in the next years . She used to always ride on DJs shoulders, but clearly is getting too big to carry any long distances now that she is 70 lbs.
Once we got back to our campsite, the boys played catch for a bit and then took the kayaks out on Lake Fanny Hooe while I did a load of laundry.
Once they got back from paddling, I took a turn on my kayak with my audiobook and my new open-ear conduction headphones. It was fabulous and made me happy!
Dinner was Instant Pot steamed potatoes with some leftover black eye pea soup that I froze after a family reunion potluck earlier this month. Tasted better than it maybe looks.
Jackson dug in and practically inhaled his. He is definitely growing and eating more these days.
Once Amelia was asleep, the boys got a bonfire going. It was the perfect night for one.
S’mores!
We don’t tend to have a lot of bonfires while camping, but always enjoy them when we do.
After our bonfire, we all showered and went to bed. We are still not transitioned back to the Eastern Timezone yet, even though it’s just an hour ahead.
See ya Michigan, onto Canada!
Adventuring with Amelia 