Yankee Springs Recreation Area

A few weeks ago, we ventured out to Yankee Springs Recreation Area for a weekend of camping with Chris and Erika Vonk.   This was the second installment of what has become a yearly event for us.  This years trip, did not disappoint, with perfect weather, plenty of bugs, and off-key worship songs.

We headed up to Yankee on a Friday after I got out of work.  Chris and Erika go there before us and warned us that three of the neighboring campsites were occupied by a Youth Group on some sort of camping retreat. 

Our site in the foreground, and their setup in the background.

Now, I fully support these types of adventures for students to get them into the outdoors, however, they set up ‘central camp’ 10 feet away from our fire pit.  It made for a rather awkward set up.  We were quite involved in their weekend.   We heard conversations, watched games and listened to some not so on key a cappella worship songs.  

Outside of the awkward set up it was a nice weekend.  The weather was perfect.  The temps hit the 80s during the day and down into the 50s at night.

We tried a little orienteering; however, the mosquitoes and spider webs thwarted that attempt.  We also did a little geo-caching, which was successful as we found 2 different caches!

We rented kayaks for an hour and explored Gun Lake.

We also enjoyed s’mores, hobo pies, and numerous games of Farkle, which everyone won at least once except for me.  For a game of luck, I am pretty bad at it.  

 We even had an attempt at making some jiffy pop over the fire (epic fail).  However, the kids next door were mesmerized, and clapped when Chris had finished.  Little did they know that not a single kernel had popped, but Chris had only managed to get the foil to expand.

It was a great weekend at one of my favorite places in Michigan.