Blog Post #32 - Written September 3, 2025
Stay: July 1-4, 2025
For our last stay it the "glove" or "mitten" of Michigan, we stayed at Camp Pet-O-Se-Ga on Pickerel Lake. The beach/lake at the campground itself was a bit of a disappointment (water was chock full of gross grass/weeds/plants), but the rest of the campground and all our excursions were great.
Megan did find a few cool snail shells at the beach
When we checked in, the lady at the office mentioned that her mom had asked her to catch a few frogs from the campground to stock her new pond she had just built. The boys of course volunteered to help her! She gave them a plastic bin to put the frogs they caught in. We hiked around the campground and found a few rivers, streams, bogs, marshes, and even checked the lake, but didn't find any frogs. The boys were not too disappointed though, because they found lots of bugs to fill the container with instead!
Z and Q tried to hide their bugs up high to keep them safe from D, but her determination was greater than their ingenuity haha :)
One of our favorite parts of this campground was their sweet 18-hole disc golf course. It was very rustic, and very easy to lose your disc in the trees and tall grasses haha, the challenge and risk made it exciting :) The boys did great and continue to impress me with their improvement throwing a frisbee, especially lil' Q. They asked to go again later that night.
We visited the nearby Oden State Fish Hatchery for a fascinating free guided tour and bike ride around their trails and ponds. We learned too much to remember about how the various state fish hatcheries around the state of Michigan (there are 6 of them) raise fish, from egg to fry to adult broodstock. Egg taking, semen collection, and much more. It was a lot of fun. After the tour, we biked down to the "Big Fish Pond". Wow. That's an understatement. These trout were absolutely massive. By far the biggest trout I've ever seen. The pictures and videos below don't really do them justice. They were 2-3 feet long and some were probably 6-9 inches in diameter.
They also had a glass viewing chamber of a natural stream so you could see the fish swimming in the stream.
Video: We threw in a big handful of fish food to capture a
fish feeding frenzy on video for you :)
We visited Petoskey Beach to look for more petoskey stones, but didn't find very many. The highlight here were the sand dunes. The boys found a bunch of playmates and had a blast jumping off the dune cliffs :)
We celebrated the 4th of July in Alanson, MI. They had a fun parade and then a BBQ in the community park afterwards. The highlight was probably this awesome, homemade carnival ride that has been in the parade every year for the past 50 +/- years! The guy's grandfather built it and the kids love it.
Video: All 3 kids on the carnival plane ride.
As we walked back to our truck from the park, we saw the "Inland Waterway" museum, so of course we had to stop in to see what the heck it was. Because we're museum addicts haha. This one (like most small museums) is run entirely by retired volunteers who love to share their passion. We learned all about the maritime history of this part of upper Michigan and how early travelers could take this 45-mile long waterway from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. I love learning about people's ingenuity and grit!
Bonus: I think this might be D's first fish that she caught all by herself haha :)
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