Camping with Bozz - Caseville, MI

Memorial weekend will always signal the arrival of camping season for my wife and I. Until we retire and can travel whenever we want that is...

When this weekend comes, we almost always pack up our stuff and head to Sleeper State Park in Caseville, MI.

One of the main reasons we head to Sleeper is because it is relatively close to where we live. I like this for the first trip of the year just in case something goes wrong or we forget something, we are not stranded in the middle of nowhere.

You also have to take mostly back-roads to get to Sleeper State Park. This makes travel nice especially on the holiday weekend when the traffic on the expressway is bumper to bumper.

Sleeper State Park is actually a little north of the town of Caseville. It has 226 camping sites and access to a beach across the street. There is a pedestrian bridge to get to the beach so you don't have to try and cross M-25 which can be busy at times.

There is also a campground in town that is part of a city park. My wife and I drove through it several years ago and although it has full hookups for your trailer, the sites are very close together.

My wife and I both went camping as children with our parents. When we got together we knew it was a tradition we wanted to continue.

We started in a tent and camped in that for a couple of years. Eventually we upgraded to this 18 foot camper you see in the picture.

We bought it used and were able to get a really good deal on it. It served us well for many years until we were finally ready to upgrade.

By Spring of last year we had saved up enough to put a down payment on a new trailer. The new one is 26 feet long and the best part is, my wife and I can finally sleep together because the beds aren't singles!

Sleeper has sites of many sizes. Some are only for tents and others are big enough to accommodate huge motor-coaches.

The State of Michigan has done a great job of updating their website for reservations and you can now see the dimensions of the site and a picture of the site you are reserving before you pay.

I always try to get a site as wide and deep as I can. I am still not that great at backing our trailer in and I like to give myself as much room as possible!

Once I had it all backed in and setup though, this was my view for the weekend. There was a large group of people in the site next to us in tents. My wife and I were watching them setup and we could tell right away this was their first time camping.

After watching them struggle with setting up the tent for a little bit, I finally went over and showed them how to get started. Things went much quicker for them after that and they had the rest of their camp setup in no time.

While you can get sites in the center loops that back other campers, my wife and I prefer to get sites on the outer loops. This way all you have behind you is woods and you only have neighbors on two sides.

We have some friends that we camp with pretty regularly. They actually bought our old tent from us and camped in that for many years until they were able to buy their own trailer.

They got to the park a bit later than us and my wife and I had sat down to enjoy the fire. Our dog Jovi was busy laying under the trailer and chewing on a stick.

A short time later our dog threw up. We figured part of a stick just scratched her throat and she needed to get it out.

Later that night we were all sitting around the campfire and my wife said "why is her head so big"? I was confused at first, but sure enough Jovi's head was huge! She looked like a basset hound instead of a lab.

It was now 9:30 at night and the closest vet in Caseville was long closed. We were finally able to get ahold of an emergency clinic and they said it sounded like our dog was having an allergic reaction to something.

They suggested that we give her some Benadryl.

Of course, we didn't have any with us and by now it was 9:40 PM so we were pushing the limits on the number of stores that would be open. My friend and I hopped in his truck and got to the closest Dollar General seven minutes before they were set to close.

Luckily they had what we needed so I quickly paid and we rushed back to the campground.

We force three of the pills down her throat and although she spent most of the night stoned from the Benadryl, she woke up the next morning back to normal as you can see from the photo above.

We will definitely be keeping the left over meds in the trailer from now on in case this ever happens again. It was a very scary night and not at all relaxing like camping is supposed to be.

The other two nights we spent at the campground were pretty uneventful with the exception of a small storm quickly moving through Sunday night.

Since it is Spring, the mosquitoes were out in full force. If you ever get the chance, I suggest you invest in a Thermacell.

We have two different models as you can see in the picture here. When we started camping we wanted to protect our dog without having to spray her with nasty chemicals. The Thermacells use a butane cartridge to heat a naturally scented pad that is a repellent to mosquitoes. It gives us a 15 foot radius or so of protection and they have been total lifesavers.

My wife saw a really good deal online a couple of weeks ago with free shipping, so we picked up a couple more of them. The refill butane and scented pads can be picked up on Amazon or most retail stores like Walmart.

That was our first camping trip of this season! The next trip we go on in a couple of weeks will take us to the other side of the state.

Instead of a picture of Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay, I can open with a picture of Lake Michigan!

Michigan is a great state with some awesome parks and fantastic nature to immerse yourself in.

If you need power when you camp, stick with the State Parks. If you are up for really roughing it, check out some of the State Forest campgrounds.

Those are much more secluded, but there is no power and there are no modern bathroom/shower facilities.

Thanks for stopping in on our first camping trip. We usually spend most of our time right at the campground relaxing and people watching. I will do my best to make it interesting for you and pass on any hints or tips I have picked up over my many years of camping!

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