Tahquamenon Falls State Park

Adventures in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula | Pere Marquette National Memorial | Camping on Whitefish Bay | Hiking in Tahquamenon Falls State Park | August 2023

Having spent a few enjoyable days hanging out in the Northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, it was time to head into the upper peninsula for a week of slow travel and easy adventures. We crossed the Mackinac Bridge for our third time together, and Charlotte’s first time — so now if the UP ever becomes its own state, she’ll still be able to say she’s been to every state. We stopped right away at the Pere Marquette National Memorial on the West side of the bridge. It was a foggy/cloudy day, so we didn’t have any views of the bridge, but we still enjoyed walking through the park and learning about Father Marquette, and his role in exploring the Upper Mississippi River.

After a light lunch, we continued on our way heading North to a campsite for this evening. Curtis had heard of a free spot that was right on the coast of Lake Superior on Whitefish Bay. This spot easily won ‘best campsite of the trip’ — though we really lucked out overall with great sites, it’s hard to beat having a private lake front property. Curtis even jumped in the lake, but both the air temperature and lake temperature were too cold for my liking. Since we were right on the North Country Trail again, Curtis took the opportunity to go for another hike while Charlotte and I relaxed at the campsite.

Curtis: I started my hike going East along the coast, sometimes walking on the beach, sometimes the forest, and occasionally along the highway. Since it was all flat, I made very quick time and covered a lot of ground, though I probably would have been faster if I didn’t stop for blueberries all the time. After two-ish miles, I reached the next pull off along the highway and stopped to grab a letterbox, intending to then go on another half mile to a second letterbox and a pedestrian bridge. But, as I was pulling the box and getting ready to stamp in, I felt a sharp pain in my hand. I clapped my hands together and came away with a yellow-jacket. With much cursing I quickly backed away and down the trail where I tried again to stamp in only to feel an identical pain on my ankle. Double trouble. I quickly finished up the letterbox, carefully returned it to its hiding spot without any further incident and then evaluated my situation. I was two miles away from Jess, with limited cell reception, having just been stung twice by wasps. I’ve only ever been stung by a bee once, and I came away from that no worse for the wear, so I was pretty confident I wasn’t going to go into any sort of anaphylactic shock, but I waited by the road a couple minutes just in case. Thankfully, except for a dull pain in my hand and ankle, I was fine and managed to hobble the two miles back to camp without further excitement.

We had been looking forward to watching the sunset over the lake, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the sun or have any sort of colors. Oh well, we still slept well here, being able to slightly hear the sound of the waves over the sound of our vent fan. It would’ve been fun to stay here longer, but besides walking the North Country Trail there wasn’t much we could do in the immediate area, and everything else was further West anyway, so it just made more sense to keep rolling along. We’ll keep this spot in the back of our minds and hopefully find another opportunity to stay here one day!

The next day’s highlight would be Tahquamenon Falls State Park, not too far Northwest from where we had camped. This is a fairly popular state park, and would be the busiest place we would visit during our week in the UP. But the trails to the waterfalls were easy enough for Charlotte to do, so we thought it would be worth it. We started at the trailhead for the lower falls, which was mostly a boardwalk along the river and through a marsh area with a few viewpoints of the falls, before it crosses a bridge and it became a bit more “primitive,” but still pretty easy. We took it at Charlotte’s pace, and she did very well — it helps when the boardwalk keeps her focused on walking forward rather than having a chance to wander off trail. 

However, all the other people here magnified a big pet peeve of ours that I can’t help but rant about: The worst thing about having a dog who is getting older is that everyone feels the need to comment on it. Almost everyone who we crossed paths with today had to say something about how old she looked, her age, how slow she was going — not even noticing that she didn’t have eyes, just assuming that she was tired or sleepy when really, we were proud of how well she was doing. This does nothing but constantly remind us that our days with her are temporary, and there is no benefit of pointing that out. So here’s our advice: If you see a dog that looks on the older side, it is absolutely unnecessary to comment on this — the owner is likely very aware and has a front row seat at watching their dog age from adult to senior dog, and are doing their best to enjoy every day they have with their pet. Instead, say something about how the dog is doing such a good job, how they’re still so cute, and how the owners must be so lucky to have such a good dog. Because she is, and we are! 

Anyway, after we completed the hike to the lower falls, we made our way over to the Upper Falls trailhead. Here we walked another mile and change on a loop that gave us great views of this taller waterfall, and I went down the stairs to get a closer look. We returned to the parking lot on a side trail through the woods which gave us a break from the crowds and their comments. Besides both of those, we had a great time hiking in this park, but were ready to move on and find a spot to camp that was away from the crowds!

We drove a couple hours West to Ottawa National Forest, where we found a dispersed spot in the woods that was not too far from the highway, but still isolated and very quiet. We made ourselves at home and relaxed for the rest of the evening. Things got a little interesting when we heard tornado sirens go off, but they were only for a severe storm that barely touched us.