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Return to Orchard Beach State Park
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It had been several years since @mrsbozz and I visited this state park on the west side of Michigan. It's honestly not one of our favorite state parks, but the location was favorable for some spots I wanted to visit that I have blogged about already. It's also a relatively nice park if not just a little crowded at times. Compared to some of the state parks we have visited in the past, this one would probably be considered "small" with just a couple hundred sites.
If there were a bit more space, the sites were larger, and there was better access to the lake, it would probably be one of our favorite parks.
Despite it not being my favorite park, it does hold a special place for me as I remember visiting this campground when I was just a kid with my parents. It's also one of the first campgrounds we ever visited when we purchased our new trailer.
Before Covid, it was pretty common for state parks to be relatively empty through the month of June. People would camp for the Memorial weekend holiday, then kind of back off until the 4th of July. From the 4th of July to Labor Day weekend, it was basically a free for all. With Covid that changed as everyone was looking for a way to get out and about. Campgrounds were packed full from Memorial Weekend through Labor Day Weekend.
Thankfully, we are finally getting back to a point where things are a bit more dead between Memorial Day and the 4th of July. It's not totally back to normal, but it is getting better. When we pulled into Orchard Beach State Park a couple weekends ago, it was relatively empty with one glaring exception.
Pretty much everywhere we looked were these Ford Transit camper vans. I'm not kidding, there were dozens of them. All the people in them seemed to know each other as well. We sat around and tried to figure out what the story was until eventually our friend just asked one of them.
It turns out they are all members of a Facebook group for this style/model/brand of camper van. They set a location and then each day they post where they are and anyone close just comes and stays as well (as long as they can get a site). This group was on their way to the upper peninsula of Michigan and they must have been traveling up the west coast of the state to get there.
We saw license plates from all over including North Carolina and North Dakota. It was pretty cool. I reached out to @ericvancewalton to see if he had heard of this model because I know he has been looking at something like this for a while now. It seems they are very customizable with lots of options and features you can add to them.
When I was making the reservations for this trip, I noticed that in September they were going to be shutting down the campground early for the season. It turns out they are going to be making some more improvements to the park. They already added the electric vehicle charging stations that you see in the photo above, as well as a new sanitation station (where you fill your water and dump your poo). It's also one of the few parks in the state that has full hookup sites available.
The bath houses are pretty dated compared to some other parks and that is what they are going to be fixing in the off season this year. I would expect by next summer they should have nice shiny bath houses available for guests to use.
Until several years ago, a big stone building used to sit at the top of the hill you see in the background of the above photo. I remember that building from when I was a kid, it had a large picnic area in the middle and then bathrooms on either side. It was a sort of staging point for getting down to the beach on the other side of the bluff. Unfortunately, due to erosion, the building was at risk of falling into Lake Michigan.
Instead of tearing it down, they decided instead to just move it.
In case you can't read the information on the sign I posted above, the building weighs 850 tons (over 2 million pounds), and it was moved 1200 feet from the original location to where it sits now at the north end of the park. It was designed by Ernest F Hartwick who has another state park named after him that we are going to visit later this summer. It cost $3.6 million dollars to move the building.
Oh, I should also point out that the building was originally built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) with limestone that came from both Wisconsin and Drummond Island.
Remember that hill where the building used to sit? That area has now been turned into a rustic camping area where campers can park at the bottom of the hill and put up their tents at the top of the hill for some great views of Lake Michigan.
The name Orchard Beach comes from the fact that this was once an apple orchard back in 1887.
You can still see the apple orchard heritage to this day at the northern end of the park where there are a handful of apple trees here and there.
Over the years, @mrsbozz and I have made it a habit of taking a walk around whatever campground we are staying at each morning. This used to be a good way to give our dog Jovi some exercise, but now that is no longer with us, we continue the practice to keep ourselves moving! Because of that, I am going to include this post as a #wednesdaywalk post for the community started by @tattoodjay.
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