Camping with Bozz: Mitchell State Park

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I've said this before, but it is amazing how some places just seem to keep drawing you back even though you may have visited them a million times already. Mitchell State Park in Cadillac, MI is one of those places.

This isn't even the first time that I have posted about Mitchell State Park. If you look way back through my posts, I am sure you will find multiple references to this park.

I think part of what makes this park so special is the location. Right off highway 115, it sits right in between Lakes Cadillac and Mitchell with a channel connecting the two lakes. If you are lucky enough to get your reservation in early, you can actually get a campsite right on the channel.

Many people tend to frown on this park a little bit. They find the noise from the highway too loud and being right on the outskirts of the city, they don't feel it is "rustic" enough. My wife and I don't really mind it though. After a while, you kind of block out the highway noise. Plus with views like the one above, I think a little noise is worth it.

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Another thing we love about the Cadillac area is the fact that there is so much to explore. From the downtown area, to the newer more commercial area with big box stores and chain restaurants. Speaking of restaurants, we tried a new one this past weekend.

While typically we prepare most of our camping meals ourselves, occasionally, we enjoy just relaxing and letting someone else do the work.

That was the case the first night of this trip when we placed a take out order from Biener's Pizza. I will be honest, the building is a little scary, but the food was pretty fantastic. It's situated right across the street from the high school in an old storefront that looks pretty run down.

We ended up ordering way too much food, but since we didn't know what to expect, we figured better safe than sorry. Plus leftovers are never a bad thing when you are camping. You never know when you might need a midnight snack!

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Sorry for the bluriness on this one. I guess I thought I was holding more still when I took it. We started with the cheesy bread you see above and then the four mini pizzas pictured here. One was called "a walk in the garden" and that is the veggie pizza in the upper left. On the right next to it is chicken bacon ranch.

Below the chicken bacon ranch was the BLT (Bacon Lettuce Tomato) pizza, and finally in the lower left hand corner was the meat lovers.

We didn't end up caring for the BLT pizza too much. The mayonnaise base was just too heavy. The chicken bacon ranch was fantastic, but much too rich to eat more than just a piece or two. There is no way we would have been able to order and eat a full size pizza of the CBR.

The meat lovers and the veggie were pretty fantastic. I really enjoyed them.

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We also decided to order some boneless wings to snack on. The ones you see above are the garlic Parmesan and while they were good, they were a bit too salty. Our favorite by far was the honey garlic that I apparently didn't get a picture of. Those ones were fantastic and I would get a full order of them anytime.

I was actually craving them the rest of the weekend long after I had eaten the first six!

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Being after Labor Day, the park was a bit emptier than you would expect it to be. In the summer, this park is packed full pretty much every day of the week and weekend. It was still over 50% full if I had to guess.

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The temperatures for this past weekend were just about perfect too. High 70's to low 80's during the day and low 60's to high 50's at night. I'd actually prefer the mid to lower 50's at night, but it still wasn't too bad.

What I hate is when it is so hot that you don't even want to have a fire. That is the worst because camping just isn't as fun if you don't have a fire to sit around at night. This trip was far too short, but we had a couple great nights around the fire laughing and chatting with our good friends.

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Saturday morning @mrsbozz and I decided to take a walk. There is a trail just outside the park that runs along the edge of Lake Cadillac. It leads in to the downtown area and takes you by a couple of really cool parks. I will be writing more about one of them a little later this week.

The views as the sun rises are pretty spectacular as you can see here.

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You might think that this park dies down once the summer is over and people have stored their boats away for the winter. You would be quite wrong though. If anything, the area gets even busier. As the lakes get a good freeze and thick layer of ice, the snowmobiles take over and the lakes get covered with ice fishing shanties.

I know some of the businesses in this area actually do more business in the winter than they do in the summer.

No matter the time of year, if you get the chance to visit Cadillac, MI, I highly recommend it. I am going to be driving through this area again in just about another month and it is going to be hard not to want to take a detour and stop just to enjoy it again.

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Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced