In this episode we head over to the Porcupine Mountains in UP Michigan. We missed this place last year when we were traveling through the area and we heard good things about the sheer number of hiking trails available. We decided to combine some hiking with some fishing out on Lake Superior as well!

WHERE WE STAYED🛻⛺:

Union Bay Campground – This is the only campground with electrical in the Porcupine Mountains, and since we still were trying to keep our trolling motor charged, we needed that electrical.

From being at the campground, here’s our Pros and Cons list:

• Pro: you can find sites RIGHT on Lake Superior, which is awesome
• Pro: they have electricity which is great in the summer when you need that AC or (like us) when you need that boat charged
• Pro: the bathrooms and showers were in good shape
• Pro: They have a really nice boat launch right on site, which also has picnic tables for some awesome lunches, or a great place to sit and watch the stars at night
• Pro: You’re pretty far from a lot of normal town-type things. I think this is good, but be prepared and get your stuff before you arrive (unlike us)
• Con: the campground is pretty tightly packed – you will most likely be looking at others if you’re relaxing outside at your campsite
• Con: the amount of people in the campground was fairly high when we stayed. Weekends were booked solid so you got to listen to a lot of people throughout the night. Though I would say it wasn’t rowdy.
• Con: the road getting to Union Bay Campground is pretty rough. Ignore the speed limit signs and go a LOT slower. Several curves have some nasty potholes which could launch pretty much everything in your camper
• Con/(Pro?): You are definitely far

If we didn’t need the electricity, I think we would have stayed at Presque Isle Campground – we just drove through but the sites seemed to be a bit more spread out.

🍽️🐟🍽️ WHERE WE ATE: 🍽️🐟🍽️

• Uh, don’t expect anything here. We ate at our camper the entire time we were here, so make sure to stock up!

🥾🚴‍♀️🛶🐟WHERE WE PLAYED:🐟🛶🚴‍♀️🥾

Well, the point of staying in the Porcupine mountains is the hiking. This place is definitely set up for multi-day hiking, with many cabins and dispersed camping throughout the park. I think we may try and tackle that sometime in the future – it really looked fantastic!

For fishing, we used the really nice boat launch they had at the campground. We weren’t too far from Ontanogon Marina, but couldn’t find gas for our boat there (which was strange). If you are doing fishing in this area, we recommend to follow the contour lines of the ski mountain – that’s where we caught our lake trout.

We went on 2 hikes with multiple combined trails while we were in the Porkies:

Little Carp Trail, Superior Trail and Cross Trail Loop – 13.5 mi

The Little Carp Trail portion was beautiful – lots of small waterfalls, some shallow river crossings, following the river pretty much the entire time.

The Superior trail was quite wet – if it recently rained, we would not recommend that trail but there are some pretty cool campsites in this area.

We do *not* recommend the cross loop trail. It is one of the least-traveled trails in the park and has a TON of tree fall and could be quite muddy depending on recent weather. On the plus side, we saw 1 couple the entire time on that leg of the trail. If you’re gonna see black bear anywhere, I would have guessed that trail (though we didn’t).

Summit Peak and South Mirror Lake Loop Trail – 5.5 miles

This was a much shorter and pretty low-key trail. The Summit Peak trail has a lookout that you can see a lake, but we couldn’t see anything that day through the fog.

This is supposed to be amazing in the fall! This was an enjoyable hike, nothing dramatic (except that incident at the end of our video).

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Other Links

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Our Camping Locations & More!

If you’re interested in seeing all of the places we’ve stayed, I’m keeping a (mostly) updated list on Google Maps. Enjoy!