CAMPGROUND REVIEW - Seney Township Campground in Seney MI - our 3rd night in Lake Superior area

Okay, this is the third day in our quest to find cooler weather by camping up around Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

We really aren't having a lot of luck! Especially when the weather reports show back home in Oconto Wisconsin the weather is 10 to 12° cooler. Ugh! 

We know if we were going to make it through the 90° weather we were going to need another campsite with an electrical hookup. We had to leave the one at Muskellonge State Park up near the shoreline. 

We knew that about 20 to 30 miles inland and 20 mi over around Seney Michigan there was a little township Campground located on the Fox River. We knew it had hookups, and we also knew it was the first come first serve type campground. Seeing as it was a thursday, we might have a good chance to get in there. 

So we headed out of Muskallonge and gladly drove on a paved road from there down to Newberry! After the past two days of doing 13 or 14 miles of gravel washboard road going from Grand Marais over to Blind Sucker #2, and then to Muskallonge, being back on paved road again was a wonderful blessing!

When we arrived in Newberry, we pulled off to a station to fuel up with diesel. The price was a little higher than we were used to, $3.99 a gallon. But we didn't mind because it was a well used station that had a reasonably fresh supply of fuel. Sometimes, when stopping at little out of the way places with diesel, you never know what type of fuel you're going to get or how long it was sitting in the tank underground. This was a pretty big busy station on the main drag so we knew we could get reasonably good fuel.

When I went inside to pay for our fuel, I saw these wonderful Sayklly's brand chocolate bars at the register. As a child, we would take orders and sell big boxes of Sayklly's fudge as a fundraiser for 4-h. We would sell them to all of our customers along our little paper route, so we had a built-in customer base to order fudge from us. I remember we would sell the chocolate fudge or the maple nut fudge. People would leave notes on their door of how many boxes they wanted of each, and they would buy them in November and save them for Christmas presents! Sayklly's is known all across the U.P. for it's wonderful chocolates and fudge. So when I saw the candy bar there, I just had to grab it. Step back in time for childhood memories. 

We drove west across from Newberry over to Seney and turned up on Fox River road towards the Seney Township Campground. It is located only a mile or so out of town. There's a nice little convenience store gas station right at the intersection if you need anything before you get to the park. 

They don't really have a website, because they are just a small township park. But this is the link from the Pure Michigan site with more information:

https://www.michigan.org/property/seney-township-campground

Our campground is located on the banks of the Fox River, famous for it's Trout Fishing and the true destination of Ernest Hemingway. Quiet area offering 15 modern campsites with electric and also 10 tent sites. 4 vault style toilets. Flowing Well. All amenities are nearby in the town of Seney. The Fox River Pathway, a 27 mile long hiking trail that follows the route taken by Earnest Hemingway when he visited the area, begins at the western edge of the campground. Parking is available at the trail head. All sites are on a first-come first-serve basis. No reservations.

Local: (906) 499-3491

The park is well marked with this beautiful sign in memory of Francis Morrison.

We love the hand-painted sign at the entrance to the park along with a box of regular plain postal white envelopes.  Also in the box are two piece carbon forms that when you filled out one layer the other one was your slip to hang on your post. Pay as you go honor system. I love it!

If you didn't look carefully at the sign, you could miss the senior discount! We saved $2! Not too bad for a site with electricity. 

We drove around the single loop of the campground. It's very neat and clean. All of the electrical posts are updated with new modern posts that contain a 50 amp, 30 amp, and a 20 amp outlet. Cellular signal is pretty good, and tv stations from Escanaba and Marquette come in pretty well.

There is a little picnic table near the open area by the river. We saw a number of fishermen stop in from time to time, tossing a line for a few minutes, perhaps on their way home from work? 

We chose the campsite closest to the river on the right side of the park. Over on the left side of the park there were two other sites occupied by people in a pop-up camper and a tent. They were in a shady area. We were hoping to find a little more shade but we happened to be in an area with some pretty direct afternoon sunlight on the driver's side of our motorhome. 

The park has two clean neat pit toilets that are located behind the campsites. I guess you have to walk through the campsites to get there? We don't really think about it because we use the toilet inside of our motorhome. 

There is a nice modern pavilion in the center of the loop as well as some playground equipment for the children. 

I think the center area also doubles as a picnic space in case people just want to come for the day. A variety of picnic tables and grills were scattered about. 

Over on the far end of the loop, was an artesian well! It's kind of rigged up so people can fill a water jug from it but then it directs the rest of the overflow down through the culvert and into a small stream. From there at winds its way down to the river. 

Here is an old sign located near the river that gives some more information on the location. So this is why we were seeing fisherman come and drop a line!

It was a pretty quiet and peaceful location next to the river. There were some large horse flies flying around that were kind of pesty but it wasn't too bad. The temperature was rising and things were getting a little hot. 

We retreated back inside of the motorhome and cranked up the air conditioning inside. We took out our roll of reflectix insulating barrier and stretched it across the windshield. We have cut away two little areas to make it form fit around the mirrors and we secure each side in the crease of the closed door jams on each side. It takes two people to put it up into place, but we found this to be the best solution for covering the front windshield in hot weather. 

It cools down the inside immediately after placing it across the windshield. We could order a $100 plus custom form fitted windshield cover, but for now, this works fine for us. 

We do have these really neat interior accordion folded pleated blinds. They are built in right into the cab frames around the front and side windows and doors. They retreat back and secure out of the way out of sight. They work good for privacy, but not for the heat that comes through the windshield. It's better to block it off on the outside before it even enters the rig. 

And boy oh boy did the temperatures ever rise! The hot sun shining down on the front of the rig registered 98°. I know that's a little hotter than the actual temp, but it just shows how hot it was out there during the afternoon. This is SO unusual for June in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan! 

Inside, the roof air conditioner did pretty well considering that we had hot sun blasting all the way down the driver's side of the motorhome. I wish that our site had more shade, the roof air could have been even more effective.

But even with 80° on the thermostat, the back bedroom area was only showing 77 on a thermometer. That wasn't too bad at all. We both curled up and took a nice long afternoon nap in the air conditioning. 

We stayed inside and played some games of cribbage. Our granddaughter Chelsea made us this cribbage board in her woodshop class. She learned how to use a drill press and also a laser engraving device and learned about choosing fonts and centering her lettering on the board. I think she did a great job!

As it got later in the evening, Steve pulled out the Blackstone griddle again. This time we decided to fry up a couple hamburgers. He set up in the shade out on the picnic table. We were right next to the river, which is nice, But..... the mosquitoes were starting to come out and they were getting a little "pesty".... 

We ate indoors because the mosquitoes seemed to start swarming as the evening came on. We stayed inside but noticed as darkness fell, the lights inside seem to be attracting the mosquitoes even more. They weren't this bad the previous two nights at the other two campgrounds. 

Those little buggers found a way up around our slide from down underneath somewhere. Steve went out and made sure that the seal was flapped the right way and they weren't getting in around the sidewalls. It was somewhere down below. From inside while setting on the love seat you could just see them buzz in about one every minute buzzing up into the interior of the motorhome! We finally gave up slapping the mosquitoes and decided to pull the slide in for the night. We can still use the love seat even with the slide in. 

Before we went to bed, we spent a couple hours still slapping mosquitoes here and there. When Steve dashed out to let Binney do her final call for the night, even coming back in we had a bunch of new ones to hunt down and eliminate. Every time we thought we got rid of them all, there would be one more annoying mosquito buzzing around our ears. 

Once we turned off all the lights, that seemed to help attract any new ones.

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I remember the days back when we had an old camper bus. Yes it was a converted school bus into a camper. We made it "cool" long before The Partridge Family ever did! This was in the 1960s. I remember my mom using Raid or Off or some kind of aerosol spray can that she would spray inside of the camper bus until it was a foggy mist--- to get rid of all the mosquitoes. Then she would shut the doors and we will wait outside and count for 15 minutes. 

Then we could all go in and sleep for the night because all the mosquitoes were dead. I really wonder about all the junk we were breathing into our lungs in the 1960s?

I wonder if they still make stuff like that today?

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We had a very quiet peaceful night. In the morning we checked the weather report. Yep, we were due for more hot hot hot weather in the Upper Peninsula! Winds out of the South were blowing up all the hot weather and there would not be any cool respite along the Lake Superior area. It was actually cooler back home in Oconto 200 miles away. 

So we decided we would just pack it up, and head on home. The next three days were due for on and off rain and thunderstorms all across the U. P. My sister was trying to camp at Ottawa Lake and had downpours on Saturday. 

So we just gave up, and headed on home.