Once a summer, my wife and I take a camping trip that is longer than most of our other ones.

The main reason for this is because we are travelling farther. The Upper Peninsula(UP) of Michigan takes about three hours to get to.

Then once in the UP, you have to travel even longer to reach your destination. Most locations in the Lower Peninsula that we camp at can be reached within a two hour drive.

In contrast, the farthest parts of the UP that we may travel to in the future take close to seven or eight hours to reach. The last several years we have camped at Indian Lake State Park.

The park is located just outside the town of Manistique and sits right on Indian Lake. The campground has 143 sites that you can camp on as well as some rustic cabins that you can rent. We prefer the sites at the North end of the campground as they tend to be more spacious.

Getting there is half the fun...

In the distance of the picture above is the Mackinac Bridge. Although I have probably been over this bridge close to one hundred times in my life, I still view it with a sense of awe and wonder when it first comes into view as you are heading North on I-75.

As kids my sister and I used to have a contest to see who could see the tops of the towers first over the trees.

From the approach of the bridge to the end of the other side, the distance is five miles. In total length I think it might be the largest in the world. Most suspension bridges are measured by the distance between towers, and in that case it is pretty small compared to others.

When you are driving over it, the five miles goes by really quickly though. We were lucky enough to have good weather on our trips over the bridge. Some days, they have to escort vehicles over or shut the bridge down completely because of high winds.

On Labor Day, they also shut the bridge down so that people can walk across it. It is a long tradition that I have never taken part in, but my Grandma used to when she was still alive.

My wife is not a fan of big bridges, but she did a great job taking some photos for me to use in this post. Normally I think her eyes would have been closed:

You can see they were in the process of painting the bridge. I have seen documentaries about the people who do that job and I know for a fact it isn't something I would enjoy!

We were pulling our travel trailer over the bridge, so we had a total of four axles. This meant that our fare after crossing the bridge was eight dollars. If we had been just travelling by car, the fare would have been $4.

We stopped to get some lunch right after crossing the bridge. Traffic over the bridge in the Summer can get crazy, so we picked a Sunday to head North. We figured everyone else would be heading South and traffic might not be that bad. We were right...

As you can see, traffic is backed up for miles with people waiting to pay their toll and head South across the bridge. It was smooth sailing for us though.

A short distance outside the town of St. Ignace on US 2, there is the stretch of highway you see above. On a nice day, cars will be lined up solid on both sides of the road with families playing in the dunes and on the beach.

After about an hour and a half drive West on US 2 we finally reached our destination. There is a small gorge that you cross at the Cut River, but they were doing construction on the bridge, so we had to take a detour around it.

After we got our campsite set up and our friends had theirs set as well, we took a walk down to the water to dip our toes in a for a little bit. It was so refreshing and the views were amazing.