Well, we learned something this year. If we don’t reserve a campsites early, we miss out completely. Due to the uncertainty of what was happening with the board, we did not reserve any campsites for the summer of 2019. We only managed to get one weekend in- Memorial Day Weekend with my sister Paige and her fiance Eric. We mostly wanted to show them around the peninsula since they hadn’t ever been up there. We did a really good job at wine tasting our way around! We were so excited to show them our cabin and also did some limb trimming and managed to create a giant brush pile to burn later.
Because we didn’t have any campground reservations, we were unable to head up to work on our property as the average cost of lodging is $150/night during the high season. Without anywhere to stay and knowing that we probably shouldn’t pitch a tent at our cabin, we just didn’t make it up there again until the end of September.
Although it was a long torturous summer of longing to be up there, when we did manage to go, we brought the whole family, dogs included. We got a wonderful site at the State Park and managed to catch a glimpse of the fall colors. We still enjoyed the weekend and felt elated to show our oldest son the cabin. For the most part, we burned brush and cleaned up the place. It hadn’t changed a bit since we had poked our heads in last winter. Unfortunately, we had to extend our building permit in May for another 6 months which was already coming to a close. They don’t make it easy on people who don’t live close but want to do all of the work themselves.
Little Leelanau 