Hiking in the Porcupine Mountains on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Escarpment Trail + Presque Isle)

After a quick fun trip through Wisconsin where we kayaked through sea caves in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, watched cheese being made from start to finish, explored Door County, and toured a goat farm, we said goodbye to Wisconsin and headed to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We have a handful of adventures planned in the Upper Peninsula but our first stop is Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park which is in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula and is the largest state park in Michigan. The Porkeys as they are nicknamed are home to beautiful views, waterfalls, and beaches and today we hope to explore as much as we can. Our first stop of the day is the Escarpment Trail which is an 8.2 mile trail that climbs almost 1,700 feet taking you to the top of a ridge and has great views of Lake of the Clouds. There are two main trailheads that you can start at. We are starting at the Government Trailhead based off of reviews we saw on all trails. To visit any state park in Michigan it costs nine dollars for a non-resident for the day or you can get the yearly pass which is $34 for non-residents. Since we're going to be visiting a handful of state parks while we're here we decided to go all in and get the year pass. The first mile or so of this trail was pretty steep you're going up up up but now we're on top of this ridge here and we're starting to get some views of the Lake of the Clouds. There's this little river valley here and it's just a gorgeous morning nice breezy cool day. The views on this hike are amazing and when we think of Michigan we've always just thought of the sandy beaches on the lake not this more mountainous terrain and it has been the best surprise. We just stopped off at the other end of the trail which is the overlook for the Lake of the Clouds and if you just want to see that overlook there is a large parking lot that you can park at and it's a 300 foot walk to get to it super gorgeous view but we do highly recommend doing this trail because you get more views along the way and it is way less crowded. So the reason we started at the Government Trailhead versus the Lake of the Clouds overlook is so that we'd end with the overlook and have awesome views versus ending at the Government Trailhead which is just a parking lot and it's super steep to get there so it'd be kind of a let down just to get to a parking lot. Also you don't have to do the entire trail to see some of the best views. We'd say the best views are about halfway through the trail or halfway through the lake so if you want to just go part of the way we'd suggest starting at the Lake of the Clouds so you start with views and then turn around about halfway through the lake and you'll get to see the best views of the hike. We ended up finding a picnic area on the side of the highway and enjoying lunch overlooking the lake and then we went in the lake and went swimming which is something we've wanted to do for weeks but it's just always been too cloudy, water's too cold, just not ideal conditions but it was perfect. We're now driving about 40 minutes across the park to the Presque Isle area which fun fact this park is in two different time zones. When we started this morning at the Ironwood Walmart where we slept last night we were in the central time zone. The area we were just in was the eastern time zone. We're hopping back into the central time zone for the Presque Isle area and then we'll hop back to the eastern time zone later. Very confusing. This area is known for its waterfalls and we're going to take a short trail to check out three of them. We made it to two out of the three waterfalls and they're both really beautiful but we got a little confused going from the second waterfall which is Minito Falls to the third waterfall which is now Adaha Falls. Right after Minito Falls the boardwalk just ends and there's this very steep rooty section that doesn't really look like the trail. It doesn't say it's the trail but very well could be the trail but we weren't totally sure so we backtracked a bit. Found this other trail that we're on now which we believe will take us to now Adaha Falls. We'll put a link to our all trails recording in the description in case you want to see the exact route we took. Not really sure if it's right but it doesn't seem wrong. One of the coolest things about this trail are these potholes in the riverbed so there are eddy currents that swirls pebbles and sand grains in a circular motion and over time it wears away at the rock and creates these really cool looking potholes. Our last trail on the park is the Summit Peak Observation Tower. The tower is 50 feet tall and is actually the highest point in the park at almost 2,000 feet above sea level. The trail is about a mile round trip which is good because we are getting tired. We have hiked over 11 miles today. On a really clear day you can see the Apostle Islands. 30 miles that way. I think you can barely make them out at least with my eyes. I don't know that the camera will pick it up but we kayaked over there about four three or four videos ago and then 80 miles that away which I can't even see that is Isle Royale National Park. Backpacking is super popular in the park and we really wanted to go backpacking but unfortunately by the time we looked into booking a backcountry site all the ones we wanted were taken but we did manage to snag this campsite at the Lost Creek Outpost Campground which is a super tiny campground in the park with only three campsites total. Our campfire feast is ready to be feasted on. So we have a potato hash where there's red bell pepper, green bell pepper, zucchini and a little bit of bacon thrown in there and then we cooked up some steaks in the cast iron skillet and then this is the chev cheese goat cheese that we got from Door County Creamery yesterday. And that's the end of our first adventure here in the Upper Peninsula. We're just going to spend the rest of the night enjoying the warmth of this campfire on this not cold at all day and enjoy this campground because our neighbors have yet to show up so we have it all to ourselves and then we're going to get up bright and early tomorrow to start exploring the Keweenaw Peninsula. The highest... I don't know why but just makes me feel like I'm like rewind refresh. Get it get it get it Oh yeah. Awww yeah. A little lawnmower. Is that how you do it? Yep.