Little Girl’s Point

The rest of my family loves rock hounding. I don’t even know if that’s what you call it, but that’s what I’m going with. They enjoy walking around, hunting for rocks. Agates are especially popular with rock lovers, and one of the best agate beaches in the area is across the lake from us, in Michigan, at place called Little Girl’s Point.

We were over there one Thursday afternoon, hunting for rocks on the beach. The beach sits just below a small bluff where there is a county park with some campsites. The kids asked me why we never camped there. I didn’t have a good answer, so we decided we’d come back the next weekend and camp, if we could get a campsite.

We somehow managed to grab probably the best site in the campground for the following weekend. Since the bus tailpipe was still being bent into shape somewhere down in Eau Claire, we loaded up the Jeep with our camping gear and headed out for a few nights in a tent.

It might seem like camping is strange thing for us to do, since we’re sort of always camping. If the bus had been running, we’d have brought it, but then again sometimes it’s good to change it up, get a little more primitive so you appreciate what you have the rest of the time. Although it’s hard to consider yourself roughing it with views like this.

Our campsite was perched right on the edge of the bluff, about 60 feet above the water. There was a gully, with a fallen tree spanning it that allowed us to get up and down without too much trouble. You just needed to have good balance to walk the log.

We got to Little Girl’s Point after a day of heavy rains, which turned the patches of clay soil in the bluffs into some impressively large mud pits. The kids scampered up and down the cliffs all day, looking for larger and larger mud pits to play in before jumping in the lake to rinse off and do it all over again.

The main difference from our usual day trip forays to Little Girl’s Point, was that we were able to linger, watch the shadows lengthen, see the orange ball of evening sun sink into the smoky edges of the lake.

It was also nice to be there in the early mornings when no one was around. It never ceases to amaze me how late people sleep. I know that I too once did that, but it still seems strange to me that you would lay around in bed well after the sun is up. These days I am usually up for the sunrise, which almost always gets you the beach to yourself, whether you’re in Florida or Michigan.

Unfortunately, as so often happens these day, our lovely little campsite was booked for the weekend, so we had to pack it up and head back to the Wisconsin side of the lake we call home in the summer. There were projects aplenty that needed my attention anyway, seats to recover, tailpipes to install, transmissions to work on, as well as friends and family coming to visit.