Family Adventures Outdoors

Overview Now, I’m the first to say that Mackinac Mill Creek Campground is definitely not my family’s normal choice for a place to camp. We tend to stick with state and national park campgrounds or go with backcountry options. Mostly rustic, mostly out of the way and secluded when possible. This is very different from all that. The place is massive compared to our usual stops. This is more like a camping resort than a campground. There are hundreds of…

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The Difference After nearly a decade of camping with at least one child in tow, I can very safely say that it changes the entire experience and preparation quite a bit. This is more the case when it comes to longer trips, and even more so when it comes to backpacking with a child. Planning out my second trip with my oldest, who will be eleven at the time, I had to seriously sit down and look over what went…

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A Return Trip I’ve spent many weekends through the years at the Pinckney State Rec Area. All have been with different people and different circumstances. This particular trip to Crooked Lake was over Mother’s Day weekend. The idea was giving my wife a weekend alone as a present and taking the three boys out on a camping trip. It’s the first time we’ve done this, but it seems like I might have started a tradition. Pinckney is one of the…

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Getting Ready to Camp I’ve spent the majority of my life camping on the regular in one way or another. I won’t call myself an expert, but I think I can safely consider myself pretty experienced. This, however, does not make me anywhere near infallible when it comes to trip prep. There always seems to be at least one thing that falls in the “I thought for sure we had that” category. When you’re newer to exploring the outdoors, this…

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The Perfect Campsite Let’s say you’ve cleared a weekend, or a week, or two. You’ve got the gear, the family is excited. Now it is up to you. You must find the perfect campsite to use those precious vacation days and build fond family memories. I’ll say right now, it probably doesn’t exist. The search for perfection is inherently setting yourself up for failure. That said, I’ve had many that come pretty darn close. Some of them were blind luck,…

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The Long Drive Dilemma I’ve said it numerous times to my own kids: “If you want to travel to all of these fun places, we need to drive to get there. So, you need to get use to it.” Let’s face it though, almost no one honestly wants to be in the car for 14 hours in a day. That said, there is truth to the statement. To get cross country you’re talking about days on the road. There is…

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