Cozy Rosie: Indian Lake State Park - Michigan (Upper Peninsula)

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Indian Lake State Park - Michigan (Upper Peninsula)

Indian Lake State Park is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This is an area of the state that has many amazing natural attractions.

Entering Indian Lake State Park

It seems that Michigan state parks are in the land of single point connections. That means the sites in their parks have only electric service and no water or sewer connections. That also means you need to arrive with empty holding tanks and a full fresh water tank. There is a dump station with fresh drinking water as you head into the park and this is a popular stop for arriving campers.

Crossing the Mackinac Bridge in a rain storm on the way to Indian Lake State Park

A few of the Airstream trailers in our WBCCI Caravan while heading to the park

It was raining when we arrived at the park and that made the grass/dirt camping sites sloppy. Couple that with a cold wind and you have an uncomfortable setup.

Weather wasn't the big issue while parking Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer. Rosie's batteries appeared to be having problems and the local store that stocked Marine/RV Deep Cycle Batteries was closing in less than two hours after we arrived at the park. That meant I needed to disconnect Rosie from our truck, pull the batteries out and get to the store as quickly as possible. Fortunately, I remembered to take a picture of how the batteries were connected before I pulled them out. That photo would prove to be a valuable tool when it was time to reconnect the batteries.

As expected, the batteries tested bad at the store and had to be replaced. Several fellow campers in the park said that we should expect about four years of service from RV batteries and the ones we replaced were five years old. So, the old batteries served us well.

One more thing related to our battery problems was that we were noticing a bad smell while at our earlier campground. Our first thought was that we had a propane leak. We checked the lines using soapy water and determined that our propane lines were OK. I think we now know what we were smelling. Rosie's batteries were cooking.

Rosie in Michigan's Indian Lake State Park

Many of the camping sites in this park are right on the lake or very close to it. That means you can expect some great views while in this campground.

Here are some specifics about this park:

Our site had 20 and 30 amp electrical service.
We needed to use our 25 foot power extension cord to reach the power outlet, which was a long way from our site.
Our site did not have a water connection. This appears to be normal for Michigan state parks.
Our site did not have a sewer connection. This appears to be normal at most state parks we have visited.
The park has very nice restrooms and showers. This appears to be normal for Michigan state parks.
We could not find any TV signals while using Rosie's antenna. Bring some DVDs if you want to watch TV.
AT&T placed a good 4G signal over the park for both voice and data.
This is a pet friendly park.

I started wondering while camping in this park if this was the lake the Cowsills sang about in the late 1960s song "Indian Lake." While that was an interesting thought, a quick Google search convinced me that the Cowsills were singing about a lake in upstate New York and not the Upper Peninsula.
While this wasn't the place mentioned in the song, it is a good place to visit and we enjoyed our stay at Indian Lake State Park.