I’ve just gone through and made all of my campground reservations, for both the 5-day/4-night trip between here and Grand Traverse in June, and for the 11-day/10-night trip to Isle Royale and back, in July. I’m now almost $250 committed to these trips.

That doesn’t mean I have reservations for every night, though. In fact, I’ve only reserved 9 nights for both trips. What’s still un-reserved are:

• On the first trip, two nights on the Manistee River at campgrounds that aren’t part of the state parks, and don’t accept reservations. One of those doesn’t even charge.
• Two nights on Isle Royale. The campgrounds there are always first-to-get-there-gets-it, which has always worked out for me.
• One night on the S.S. Badger, doing the “red-eye” crossing of Lake Michigan on the way back. I’ll need to reserve this soon to get the best price, but I haven’t yet. (I’ll also need to reserve the Isle Royale Queen for the crossing to the Island and back, but that isn’t a sleeper.)

The general choice of places where I’m stopping each night was determined mostly based on geography: here’s the route I want to take, so here are the state parks that are the right distance apart. But within each state park, when given a choice, I took the most rustic option. If there was a loop of the campground without electricity, I picked a site there. If the sites all had electricity, I chose one as woodsy and out-of-the-way as I could. The theme of the year is roughing it. Each trip is going to include two days hiking and camping in the wild, so why not keep the camping experience for the riding days similar? I’m also considering cooking at the campgrounds instead of going into town for supper on riding days, but that would introduce some new logistical challenges (food, cooking fuel), so I’m not sure about that.

(The only exception to the most-rustic rule was Ludington State Park, the first night of the second ride. They have some walk-in tent-only sites off in the dunes, but those are about a mile from the road. I need to get to the dock pretty early the next morning to take the Badger across the Lake, and that would require setting an earlier wake-up alarm and rushing a bit. I don’t want to do that.)

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