When we woke up on the morning of our last full day at Sleepy Hollow State Park, we already had a pretty good plan of what we were going to be doing. If it were up to me, I would have been happy playing another round of disc golf, but @mrsbozz had read about a small island in the middle of Lake Ovid that you could walk around. We decided to check it out.
The campground at Sleepy Hollow is actually on the other side of the lake from where the access to the island is, so unless you want to take a long long hike around the whole lake (which might not seem bad, but it's pretty oblong), you have to drive to the state boat launch for the lake and go from there.
This map actually gives you a pretty good idea of what you are looking at. As you can see, at the bottom of the map is the park entrance. Then you have the campground up on the East side of the lake. The island is over on the West side, so we had to drive back out to the main road and head down to the "Boat Launch Entrance". The hike back from the parking lot was about three quarters of a mile, then the loop around the island is one mile, so we walked pretty close to 2.5 to 3 miles by the time we were finished.
By contrast, walking from the campground to the island would have been about that distance itself. Which isn't horrible, and I think we could have handled it, but not being familiar with the area, we decided to err on the side of caution.
As you can see from the map above, there are a ton of trails in this park. They have just hiking trails as well as hiking/bike trails, and finally even horse trails. We picked the easier route to the island to save our ankles a bit of wear and tear.
Eventually, we made our way to the bridge that takes you across to the island. It was well constructed and gives you a nice close up view of just how murky the water is here. Given the fact that this is a lake is actually a dammed river is not that surprising. It's definitely a far cry from the crystal clear waters we enjoy from the Great Lakes.
The path on the island was well kept and well used, but we still had to keep an eye out for roots and things like that. I've been known to trip over my own feet at times, so things like this can be a real hazard for me. Likewise, my wife has a bad ankle from an old sports injury, so stepping on a root wrong can make a great weekend pretty horrible really quick.
Towards the back side of the island, you can get some better views of the larger part of the lake. We saw several people out fishing and paddling their kayaks while we were taking our walk. @mrsbozz and I have really been interested in getting some nice sit-in kayaks for a while now, but I just don't know how I would transport them and they aren't cheap. I don't want it to be one of those things we keep saying we will do one day and then never do, but I need to do some research and figure some things out (both logistically and financially) first!
At various locations throughout, there were these little benches you could sit on and watch the water. Unfortunately, the bugs were kind of bad, so we couldn't really sit and enjoy ourselves. Plus we had to get back to our trailer.
On the way back, we came across the beautiful butterfly that I took a photo of in the first shot. I was actually surprised that I was able to get so close to it. It helps that my new phone has a pretty good zoom mode I guess. We ended up back at the boat launch parking area and headed back to our campsite.
After getting cleaned up, we took the short drive over to East Lansing, Michigan which is the home of Michigan State University. We went to a small used bookstore, and then we headed to a local university hangout called Crunchy's for lunch.
It actually took us a second to figure out where to park and how to get inside, but once we got that sorted, we were greeted with cold beers and great food.
We shared a plate of nachos as our appetizer, then I got a burger for my meal and @mrsbozz got a turkey burger which for some reason showed up really small in the photo above. I must have resized it twice or something like that. We both agreed they were very good and my wife was happy because not a lot of places have turkey burgers on their menu these days.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing, reading, and chatting with our friends. It was really nice.
My Sports Account - @bozz.sports
Come hang out in The Pub
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My favorite parts of your trip are the butterfly shot you took and the food, of course, hahaha
Those were actually my favorite parts too!
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That park looks like a perfect place for a weekend walk or a picnic! As I like forest walks and my wife likes those types of wooden bridges, we should join you next time... 😃 Butterfly photo looks great, but the ending of the day is even better... Especially when you find a bar with pinballs! Unfortunately, I see only slot machines in bars in Spain... 😔
Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed the walk!
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We only have slot machines in casinos here However, if you head over to Wisconsin, they have them all over the place there. Thanks for stopping by!
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Nice looking State Park, but I can't really stop staring that the burger and tots....I would slam that for breakfast right now! Dang.
The tots were fantastic! The burger was good, but if I am being honest, the perfect roundness of it bugged me a little bit. It made me feel like it was more of preformed patty and not something made from scratch. It was still great though.