Harrisville State Park: A perfect way to end the summer!

Even if we had known this was going to be our last camping trip of the year, I don't think we could have planned it any better. The fact is, we weren't even supposed to be in Harrisville on this weekend. We had plans to camp at another campground a bit further south, but still right on the shores of Lake Huron.

The way the Michigan State Parks reservation site works is you can book your camping dates no more than six months in advance. That means we have to plan ahead and book most of our trips back in November - January of the previous year. The way camping has exploded since Covid hit, if you don't book that early, you likely won't get any trips in.

What ended up happening this year is the friends we had booked our trip to camp with six months ago, didn't realize that their kids were going to be involved in marching band and football. When the weekend rolled around that we were supposed to go camping, they realized they were booked solid, so they had to cancel.

@mrsbozz figured, why go to the place we were going to go if we were just going to be there alone, so she immediately started looking for openings at other campgrounds that might be more appealing. It was total luck that someone canceled this site in Harrisville last minute and we were able to snatch it up and have probably one of our best trips of the summer.

Harrisville State Park is probably one of our most favorite parks in the state of Michigan to camp at. If you are lucky enough to get one of the sites right along the beach, it is pretty amazing as you will see from my pictures.

We pulled in on Thursday afternoon just ahead of some storms that were heading our way. In fact, as you will see, our first night was a bit of a bust and we ended up going inside and watching TV while the rain pounded down around us outside.

I had just finished grilling some burgers when the rain started coming down. You can see it pouring off the edge of our awning in the photo above. We quickly realized a fire was going to be out of the question, so after sitting under the awning for a while and watching the rain come down, we eventually decided to call it an early night.

Luckily, the ground was pretty dry, so the rain soaked in right away and we had zero issues with mud or puddles the rest of the weekend. In fact, the weather was near perfect the rest of the weekend for us.

Harrisville is on the "sunrise side" of Michigan. That means on any given morning you can be greeted with a sunrise like this. I decided to cook up some pancakes on the Blackstone and snap a few pictures of what might possibly be heaven.

I'll let you be the judge. You sure can't beat that view can you?

It was quite amazing just how blue the sky was the rest of our weekend and the contrast of how green the leaves were on the trees was just amazing. I love taking photos like this where you can see the stark difference in the colors. I'm not going to lie, I might have dozed off a time or two the afternoon I took these photos listening to the waves crash along the beach.

I even took a selfie or two. You might notice I actually had a jacket on for this photo. The wind coming off the lake was pretty chilly and despite the sun being out, I needed to have the jacket on to keep me warm.

I'm not a fan of hot weather (like we are getting right now), so I kind of prefer it the way it was in the photo above.

As I was sitting there, I noticed a bit in the distance over on the next site there were some wildflowers growing. We didn't have neighbors at the time, so I quickly ran over and started to snap some photos with my smartphone.

I think they turned out pretty cool. It probably would have been better earlier in the season when the blooms were open, but despite that, it was still rather pretty. The fact that you could just see the colors still hanging on was kind of cool. I said wildflowers, but I know most of these were probably actually weeds. That didn't make them any less pretty to look at though.

In the evening, @mrsbozz and I would move our chairs down to the rocky beach area and take a couple of adult beverages with us to have our own private happy hour before dinner time. It was so relaxing. As you will see from the photos, there was a bit of a wind, so the waves were crashing quite nicely on the rocks.

It was actually a fine line between being totally relaxed and sensory overload if that makes sense.

I took well over 100 photos on this trip that I am likely going to be sharing here and there in various posts through the rest of the year. The fact is, they all turned out really great and I am proud of them. Then again, when you have a backdrop like that, it's hard not to take a good picture! Am I right?!

This is another picture of the flowers/weeds, and our neighbors two sites over who put their picnic table up on the bluff so they could sit and enjoy the view while having coffee or a meal.

There were downed trees around our area of the beach that almost made it feel like we had our own private alcove. Eventually some rock hounds would come wandering onto our section of the beach, look around, and then move along to another area.

If you look really closely, you can see a sandy path out into the water in the photo above. I thought about taking a swim one of the days, but I never got around to it. Like swimming in the ocean, there is something special about swimming in one of the great lakes. It's unlike any other body of water.

I even tried my hand at some rock stacking and perspective shots. In case you wondered, @mrsbozz is a much better rock stacker than I am! Which doesn't surprise me, because I am more about stacking crypto anyway!

Words can't begin to express how amazing of a trip this was. We normally do some fall camping too, but with the health of our dog Jovi deteriorating, our nieces and nephews all in falls sports, and the fact that we are taking a big trip for our anniversary in a month or so, we decided to skip any fall camping trips this year.

As I said, we didn't know at the time this would be our last camping vacation of the year, but looking back now, I can't think of a better way to send off summer.

Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports