26th Stop - Porcupine Mountains / Upper Peninsula (MI)

Blog Post #35 - Written October 13, 2025

Stay: July 8-9, 2025


I have good news and bad news.  Bad news first...we didn't find any porcupines in the Porcupine Mountains! :(   Apparently they were named for their shape, not because of an abundance of the second-largest rodent in North America roaming around. Megan might've been very disappointed.

Now for the good news. Actually, wait, more bad news first...they should've been named the Mosquito Mountains, for the abundance of my least favorite torment and affliction to mankind, the little blood suckers. Our campground (Ontonagon County Park Campground) was right on Lake Gogebic and must've been a mosquito breeding ground. It was the absolute worst. The little buggers got into our trailer somehow and even though Megan and I spent an hour killing 50+ of them before we went to sleep the second night, the kids woke us up at 3am wimpering because they couldn't sleep. They were being eaten alive, sucked dry, buzzed to death. We turned on the lights and were shocked and disgusted to find mosquitos everywhere. Well over 100. We spent the rest of the night/morning killing mosquitos, splattering our own blood everywhere each time we smashed one. Q and D are particularly sensitive to bug bites and react really strongly to them. We all had dozens of bites all over us, check out poor D's back below. We were so stressed and sleep deprived as we rushed to pack up to leave as we quickly as we could, that we ended up leaving both our 50-to-30 amp power adapter and surge protecter in our rush to leave that mosquito-infested swamp.

Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, I can share the pretty parts of our stay here.

We hiked up to the beautiful Lake of the Clouds. Someone we met on the trail mentioned that there was an old mine that a bunch of bats lived in now, past the other end of the lake. That sounded pretty cool, so even though it was a bit farther than we had planned on hiking, we decided to go check it out. It was absolutely gorgeous, Lake of the Clouds is just picturesque. But boy was it a long hike (especially with a too-big-to-carry but too-little-to-hike-far girl on my back)! The kids were troopers though and didn't want to turn back. We made it all the way to the spot this "bat cave" was supposed to be, only to find that we couldn't find it. We eventually found a filled-in hole in the ground that I think must've been it...but no bats.  Oh well, the views were breathtaking, so we had a good time.







D fell asleep in carrier and we put up the built-in shade in order to try and keep her head from lolling to one side, or flopping back and forth.



I loved the view of the river inlet and outlet.

Our very disappointing "bat cave/abandoned mine shaft"

Luckily we had these pretty views to console us on our long hike back  :)

And thus ended our month-long sojourn through the beautiful state of Michigan! Our next stay was in Wisconsin!!

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