A Lake of Your Own

We didn’t have a reservation for the Wakeley Lake Semi-Primitive Nonmotorized Area, so we arrived hoping there was still a site available in its rustic, walk-in campground.

      We grabbed a light load, hiked the half-mile trail to the lake, and to our delight, all the sites were open…all five of them.

      Two more loads each, a total of three miles and an hour of shuttling equipment for everybody, and four of us were set for the weekend.

      We had tents, chairs, a couple of ice chests, a lantern, more food than we could possibly eat in three days, and a lake.

      During the day, we saw a few mountain bikers and a handful of birders, but when evening arrived, everybody cleared out but us.

      For the price of some boot leather, we had a lake of our own.

      “That’s normal, nobody ever complains about a lack of sites,” said a technician for the Huron National Forest, which oversees the area. “We hardly have anybody camping back in there after the fishing season ends.”

      Totally undeveloped, free of even a single cottage on its shoreline, Wakeley Lake was owned by the same family from the 1940s until the U.S. Forest Service purchased the 2,100-acre tract in 1986.

      Special catch-and-release regulations then went into effect to protect its trophy fishery, and today Wakeley Lake is widely known for six-pound bass,foot-long bluegills, and northern pike that exceed either.

      But the fishing season is restricted from the last Saturday in April through September, while the camping season never ends.

      I’ll pass on the winter camping. My favorite time of the year to set up the tent and unroll a sleeping bag is fall.

      Not long after the anglers are gone and the kids are back in school, the bugs disappear and the temperatures begin to cool, making the portages of equipment much more bearable.

      That triggers the hardwoods, predominantly oak and maple here, to begin turning colors with the trees peaking in early October.

      This is an ideal time to spend a weekend totally outdoors, yet campgrounds throughout the state will have only a few people in them, and in the middle of the week, Wakeley Lake most likely will have none at all.

      I don’t know why. A camping trip to the lake isn’t backpacking.

      The trail to the campground is a two-track, wide enough that some people bring a wheelbarrow to haul their equipment, while others arrive with a specially designed cart to wheel in canoes and fishing kayaks.

      We used a folding wagon to carry in the ice chests otherwise everything else was in duffel bags that we threw over our shoulders.

      All this effort for a campground with one outhouse, five fire rings, and no source of drinking water. We even carried water in.

      The facilities aren’t much but the setting is a gem.

      The five sites are well spread out in a stand of towering red pine on a low hill overlooking the 108 watery acres of Wakeley Lake and its 1.8 miles of wooded and swampy shoreline

      We can sit in our campsite and with a pair of high-power binoculars gaze over the entire lake. During the summer we watch anglers, seeing what they’re catching, where they’re catching it and, if they’re on our side of the lake, what they’re using to catch it.

      In the fall we watch wildlife, including a bald eagle, great blue herons and a pair of loons that nest in the area.

      When we’re not looking at the lake we’re exploring the area on foot.

      More than 30 miles of two-tracks wind through the area, the reason Wakeley Lake has become such a playground with mountain bikers.

      The most scenic hike and the best marked paths are the trails that skirt the lake, occasionally referred to as the lakeshore or inner loop. This 3.9-mile trek begins and ends at the trailhead off M-72 and follows almost the entire shoreline of the lake where you can enjoy good views of the water.

      The loop passes the campsites and then climbs a low rise for a view of the north end of the lake through the trees.

      Within a mile you enter the “Wildlife Habitat Area,” which reopens to hikers in late summer after the loons and their young have moved off their nest. Here the trail follows a dike through the middle of a huge marsh before emerging on the west shore of Wakeley Lake.

      You continue to hug the shoreline of this beautiful lake for almost the rest of the trek back to the campsites.

      The hiking is interesting at Wakeley Lake but the best reason to walk here is to go camping. A reservation guarantees you a site in the summer and a lack of campers allows you to have a lake of your own in the fall.

Going Camping at Wakeley

The trailhead to Wakeley Lake is posted along M-72, 10 miles east of Grayling. Camping is $10 a night. A Huron-Manistee National Froest vehicle pass is required to park and can be purchased from a fee pipe in the parking area. You can reserve a campsite from June through September through Reservations.gov.

For a trail map of Wakeley Lake go to MichiganTrailMaps.com. For more information call the Mio Ranger District at (989) 826-3252.