So 
As I mentioned in the first series, since my wife had never really been to the UP before, we started on the East side and worked our way across to the West visiting new places each year. After our first solo trip, our friends decided they wanted to come along and we made it an annual adults trip.
That first year we went alone we stayed at Brimley State Park in Brimley, MI. The picture on the right is from that trip close to five years ago.
This year our friends decided they wanted to start bringing their kids along so they could see all of the cool stuff we had been seeing.
Totally understandable, as I remember how awesome it was visiting all of these places when I was a kid, so this year after
Our oldest nephew on my wife's side and the son of our friends get along really well so we asked the aforementioned nephew if he would like to come along. It was a big decision for him, but in the end he decided yes so
Normally, our trips to the UP take us across the Mackinac Bridge and then we immediately exit I-75 to get on US-2 and Head West into the larger part of the peninsula. Brimley, on the other hand requires you to stay on 75 and head North towards Sault Ste. Marie (The Soo).
One of the first things you pass as you head North on 75 after the bridge is Castle Rock. While it does offer some spectacular views of the surrounding area, it is kind of a one and done sort of thing. Plus the fact that they charge an admission fee now gave me few regrets about just passing it by.
If you ever make your way to St. Ignace you should climb it at lease once (assuming the weather is nice and you don't spend all of your time on Mackinac Island).
Instead, we continued North until we hit our exit for Brimley. The drive to Brimley State Park only takes about four hours which is not too bad considering our last trip to the UP had us on the road 7 - 8 hours to reach our destination.
We pulled into the campground and quickly got our trailer all set up. It was nice having our nephew there to help out with some of the setup and he did it all with a great attitude!
Brimley State Park could be a really nice park, but there are a couple things that will probably keep us from ever returning there again.
Typically, state parks tend to have a pretty significant DNR presence. There are usually always DNR trucks and park staff driving around the park making sure things are in order. That wasn't the case at Brimley and for a park as large as this one, that is something they need to keep up on.
The bathrooms were disgusting and given the recent guidelines with Covid I would have expected them to be even cleaner than usual. In the four days we were there, I don't think they cleaned the bathrooms a single time. That is something most parks have started doing multiple times a day (like I said because of Covid).
The other issue was with the site(s) next to ours. It was a large family with I would guess ten tents spread across multiple sites. Now, I don't have a problem with tent campers, but usually tent campers keep their area clean. Leaving items or food out is a no-no given the abundance of wildlife etc.
This groups area looked like a tornado went through, food all over (with seagulls going to town on it), clothes strewn about the ground, it was disgusting.
Luckily, when we needed a reprieve from the chaos next to us we were able to head down to the beach and get views like this. I didn't get it in the photo, but if you were to look directly to your right while standing in this spot you would be able to see Canada.
This post got a little more wordy than I had intended, so I am going to stop here. The next post in this series will take us on our first road trip to one of the must visit places in the UP.
Stay tuned!
All pictures taken by
