It's not very often that my wife and I stay at a place like this. Usually, we are more than happy staying at a Michigan State Park with limited facilities and only the absolute basics for our travel trailer like electricity.
However, every now and then we like to splurge a little and spend a little extra for more amenities. This trip would be one of those times.
In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been quite as active lately as I usually am. While I was able to take some time each day to get a full post written, my commenting and time spent on Discord has been a bit lacking.
Just about a week ago, 
In that corner of the world, large just means they have some big box stores and chain restaurants. It is a college town, home of Northern Michigan University, so I think that helps bolster the population. In addition to that, it's just a beautiful area on the shores of Lake Superior and it has a vibrant community. It's probably my most favorite town in the UP.
This wasn't our first time staying at Rippling River Resort, and there were three main things that brought us back here.
First, there really aren't any state parks near Marquette that have campgrounds in them.
Second, this campground has full hookups for your trailer. When you plan on spending more than a couple of days in one place, it is nice to have full hookups so you have direct access to electricity, water, and sewer without having to move your trailer.
Finally, this resort has a pool and since we were taking our nephew with us, we knew that would be a big plus for him!
Rippling River Resort sits down in a bit of a valley right along the banks of the Carp River. They have two or three main areas where you can park your travel trailer. They also have cabins that they rent out.
Our site just happened to be a short walk from the river, but there wasn't a trail that made it easily accessible. Just down to the left was the tent area for people who prefer to rough it.
I'll tell you right off the bat, I didn't get any photos of the pool and hot tub area. The main reason being the fact that there were just too many adults and kids running around. Trust me, you don't want to be that creepy guy taking photos of kids at the pool...
The pool is right off the clubhouse and registration building which you can kind of see in the photo above.
They have a full bar and several seating areas which I will get to in just a second.
They also have a wood fired pizza oven that you can see here. We didn't try the pizza as we were either out when it was time to eat or we just made stuff at our campsite (more posts on that later), but it's a cool idea. It's a pretty smart idea really. I think it is kind of hard to mess up a wood fired pizza (unless you burn it black), and if the fire is hot enough, you can turn over a lot of them pretty quickly.
I think it only takes a couple minutes to cook the individual pizzas off. Someone can correct me if I am wrong. It honestly probably takes more time to put them together than to cook them.
If you continue down some more steps, you finally reach the ground level where they have another seating area set up. This photo doesn't really do it justice, so I took some more.
We got there on a Sunday night and apparently, they do live music on the weekends. There was a guitar player there singing some songs, there was also a pretty good crowd of people sitting around watching him.
He was relatively good, but I didn't want to take a ton of photos given the large number of people.
I stopped back another day and it was less busy, so I got some more shots of the area. I think it is cool that they have a ceiling fan in the gazebo to keep the singers and band members cool when they are playing there. You can just see it in the photo above.
The also have a pretty large fire pit down there which makes sense given the stacked wood that you likely saw in one of the earlier photos. You can see the Carp River in the background here. It looks like it is a pretty active river with lots of rapids and things like that.
Actually, despite the fact that it was about 50 yards away from our campsite, you could still hear the rushing water in the background. It was nice.
Down in the river they had several seating areas with wooden chairs where you could put your toes in the water and hang out with some friends and enjoy an adult beverage. The prices of the drinks were about five dollars a pop, which really isn't too bad.
This is just another photo where you can see more of the river.
This was another seating area that they had a little further upstream in the river.
I have to admit, we were so busy running around seeing different things that we didn't get the chance to dip our toes in the water. On top of that, it was a little chilly while we were up in the UP. I can see on a hot summer day though that these chairs would be prime real estate. You just might want to bring your bug spray with you!
This is one final shot looking up the Carp River.
On my way back to our campsite I decided to take the path you see above. It was also visible in I think the seventh photo above.
But first, I wanted to get one final look at the music and fire pit area.
What I didn't realize, is that just up the path, then had another seating area. It didn't have direct access to the river, but it gave you a nice view from a little higher up. I'm not sure what the circular wooden thing is except maybe a frame for photos, but it was kind of interesting.
One final photo of the upper seating area.
Our second day at the campground the weather started to turn a little bit and a storm front moved through.
The skies opened up and it started to rain pretty hard. Luckily, like most travel trailers we have an awning attached to our rig so we were able to sit under that until it got too cold and wet and we decided to go in.
While we were sitting inside getting ready to go to bed,
That's when she decided to open the window, and we couldn't believe what we saw...
It was still raining, but I stepped outside to grab these shots. It was like the sky was on fire. It was probably one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my 45+ years on this planet. I'm actually surprised that my cell phone was able to capture the colors so well. Believe me when I say the pictures don't do it justice.
It was simply amazing.
Finally, I am going to leave you with a funny story. On our last night of camping at Rippling River, I got thinking about a guy that my wife and I work with. His family are avid campers and they also enjoy mountain biking. Rippling River sits right down the road from the trail head for some of the premier bike trails in the Marquette area.
I messaged him and asked if he had ever camped at Rippling River. He replied back with a photo and said "do you mean this place?". I quickly replied and asked him if that was an old photo or if he was actually there right now. He replied back that he was on site 35.
I quickly grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge, hopped on my bicycle, and road over to his site. He was shocked to see me. Turns out we had both been there most of the week, but we didn't realize it until our last night there.
We had a good chat and enjoyed the beers.
If you get a chance to visit Rippling River Resort, I highly recommend it. It's worth checking out! If you don't believe me, take my co-workers word for it!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or