The 2012 Fellowship Camping Weekend will be June 8,9 &10 at Platte River Campground in beautiful Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park! For those of you who have never been to Sleeping Bear Dunes, this is an especially beautiful part of God’s creation. There are very good reasons why this is a national park. The Platte River Campground is very nice and the sites are more spread out than Ludington. The sites are all shaded and in the loop where we will stay they all have electricity. The bathroom and shower facilities are clean and very nice also. The prices are about the same as the state park but you will need to buy a national park pass for $20 because your state park vehicle pass does not apply in the national park.
We will be across the road from the Platte River which is a great river to tube or canoe so we will have to do a church tubing party on Saturday! Where the Platte River empties into Lake Michigan is a very nice beach quite similar to our Ludington swimming spot – except the scenery is even more beautiful. There are some very nice small towns and scenic outlooks that you can drive to and explore if you don’t like to spend too much time on the beach. Here’s the link to the web site: http://www.nps.gov/slbe/planyourvisit/platterivercamp.htm
There are a couple of minor drawbacks: A two and a half hour drive to get there. We are not on the beach – it’s a short drive down the road. The park is pretty carefully patrolled and they do enforce their rules vigorously so we will need to be quiet after 10PM.
I’ve looked at the map of their available camping sites and it looks like we can form a nice group in loop 1. I’ll reserve site #111 tonight. It’s very important that someone else reserve site #112 quickly. After those two sites (which will be our gathering and eating sites) the next most important are #110 and #113. After those sites are taken then please reserve #108, 109, 114 and 115. If we need more sites then #105, 106, 116, 117 and 132 will be close by.
Camping and summer are coming! Make those reservations soon – here’s the link: http://www.recreation.gov/MI/PLATTERIVERCAMPGROUND/Campground/r/campgroundDetails.do?subTabIndex=campDetail&contractCode=NRSO&parkId=70937