Blog Post #31 - Written August 27, 2025
Stay: June 26-30, 2025
For this part of our Michigan exploration, we stayed at the Starlight Campground in Mancelona. It was a cool campground with a pool, playground, shuffleboard, pickleball, and other lawn games. And it was Pirate Week while we were there :) The kids loved dressing up as pirates, but even more than that, they loved the "buried treasure" easter egg hunt. The camp staff hid 12 shells around the campground...our family found 4 of them. They didn't tell us that they usually only allow one per family until afterwards! Woops, oh well. The prizes were legit though; $20 cash, a bag of candy, ice cream for the whole family, and a mining sluice gemstone bag (which was great, because Z had been begging for one since we started the trip haha. Seems like everyone's jumped on the mining sluice bandwagon, must be a lucrative side hustle!).
Video: The boys spent some of their egg hunt winnings to play on the inflatable slide.
One of the nice things about this campground, was that it is very family oriented, so there were a ton of other kids there for our kids to play with. They had a blast. Especially with the foam glider planes that Gma F bought Z for his birthday. Those planes were flying all over the playground :) See if you can find them in the pictures below.
We even joined their pirate karaoke night. We sang "Drunken Sailor" and "Wellerman". And "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" from Veggie Tales.
One of the cool things I didn't know about Michigan before this trip, is all of the great rock hounding opportunities. In this area, they have Charlevoix and Petoskey stones. We drove up to Charlevoix to Michigan Beach Park and rock hounded to our hearts content. It was a ton of fun, even if the water was very chilly haha. And can I just say that I love when beaches have swings and slides? It's the best :)
*These are not my pictures* But we forgot to take pics of all the ones we found, plus ours aren't polished and these give you a better idea of how cool they look. Petoskey on the left, Charlevoix on the right.
From there, we drove a few minutes over to Ferry Beach Park on Lake Charlevoix and played/swam in that *slightly* warmer water.
We were warmly welcomed by the local church here Sunday morning. I met a guy who had built a tiny home in Washington, then bought 30+ acres in Mancelona, Michigan and moved the tiny home over to set up here and build a homestead. We had a great chat, then said goodbye. But keep that in mind for later...
After church we went to Torch Lake and took our inflatable kayaks out. The water was as crystal clear as we'd been told, and very refreshing :) Not only that, but it's also fairly shallow for like 200 feet out from shore. So Megan and I ended up just walking and pushing/towing the kids in the kayaks along with us. It was a nice, relaxing afternoon. And really pretty. Also fun to see all the unique homes and architecture along the shore.
On our way home, we listened to a voicemail from the campground. Apparently someone from church had come looking for us and left their phone number on a note at our trailer for us. We had no idea what or who they were talking about, but were very curious. We found the note when we got back and realized it was from the guy I had talked to at church! Apparently he had told his wife about us and she wanted to meet and chat with us too haha. They invited us over for a delicious BBQ rib dinner and we loved seeing their tiny home and the kids had the best time together. Instant best friends. In fact, the next morning, Z and Q asked if we could go over again and I said "No, we can't invite ourselves over...but we can invite them to come over here." So we did. And they came and hung out at the campground. Their oldest is big into Pokemon (he's always dressed up as Ash Ketchum and gave Z and Q a hand-crocheted Pokeball as a gift), so the boys had too much fun playing Pokemon.
We also learned how cheap you can buy land up here. I'm talking 30-40+ acres for less than $50k. And the event center across the street from our campground (event center and 3 condos on 29 acres) for less than $950k). Must be the brutal winters...haha
All in all, it was a super fun stay. Here's a couple bonus pics for you. Our camping neighbors had the cutest little black bear for a dog, and the kids absolutely adored him. Plus Megan's rock she painted at one of the craft activities.
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