Late Fall Camping

Charlie and I went camping this week-end, Since we bought the camper in August, we have only had a chance to use it once so we decide to try it this week-end the latest we have ever camped. I checked with DNR and Bruin Lake State park is open until November 30, so off we went, I rather short notice although we had talked about it for several weeks.
The address for Bruin Lake is Gregory, but it is about a mile (by road) to Unadilla (I love that name, the way it sounds.)

The weather was great, a little windy on Sunday morning, and the rain held off until we were all packed up and pulling out of the campground.

We have been to Bruin Lake before, several times but we figured out that it has been at least 10 or 11 years since we were there last. We usually go there when we want to take someone novice canoeing because it is not far from the Huron River, a great beginner canoeing river.

Charlie went over on Friday afternoon and had things set up by the time I got there after work, and stopping to pick up a few groceries. Only one little glitch, he was backing the trailer in the site, make sure not to hit the fire pit and hit a tree. Not a lot of damage to the trailer but...

We also realized during our conversations that this was the very first time we have ever gone camping alone, just the two of us. some.

Fall is a great time to go camping, there is hardly anyone at the parks. Bruin Lake has 186 sites, and we counted 20 sites being used. Don't tell anybody, they might decide to try it, then it wouldn't be as nice because it would be too crowded.

Oh, the restrooms were closed for the season, but they did have an porta-john and we had the bathroom in the camper.

We ran into some people who said they had been camping for 3 weeks, there were two couples left, for this there last weekend. They had up to 7 families there at one point during the 3 weeks. They said they have been doing this for the last 10 years.

We went for a ride on Saturday, and found a horse riders campground. it was packed with trailers and horse people of all ages. Charlie had heard there was one in the area, and was checking it out for some of the kids he will be working with this year. He is going to be the horse 4-H leader, more on that in another post.

When we go camping, Charlie does most of the cooking over the camp fire. On Saturday night it was beef stew, it tasted great.

There are not a lot of trails but Charlie and the dog managed to find a few, they even walked to Undilla Sunday morning, about 5 miles cross country, on the trails and down a little private road.

We had a some nice campfires, I had to take a picture of this piece of wood, it looked a little strange. That is all one piece of wood See the picture below on the right.

We have talked about camping at least once a month, trying a different camp ground, each time, I was thinking April -October, but I found out that there are 10 state parks that are open year round. We are thinking about going sometime this winter, Anybody interested?