Memories of Sterling State Park

As camping season lurks around the corner, I’ve been planning and filling our summer with weekend trips, making reservations for the holiday weekends (which need to be done six months in advance, if you’re going to grab a campsite), and checking out new parks to explore.

I’m blessed to have grown up in the camping and boating world. My dad’s very first camping trip with his young family was in a rented trailer in 1960, long before I arrived, to Mackinaw, MI. There was a state park right at the base of the, very new at the time, Mackinaw bridge. Everyone had so much fun, I’m told, he purchased their own trailer shortly after and that’s how it all began.

Much of the camping I did with my folks in my youth, however, was at Sterling State Park, in Monroe, MI. Roughly 45 minutes from home, it was a short drive and also right on Lake Erie.

In the campground, we stayed in the loop closest the the Sandy Creek Outlet, which leads out to Brest Bay and ultimately Lake Erie. We always got the same campsite, right on the water.  My Dad loved to boat and fish, in our little 14 ft. aluminum rowboat he would strap to the top of the car, which he affectionately called the SS Never Sail.  He even stenciled Livonia Yacht Club on the stern, if you can use that term on a boat that small!  Hahaha.. We’d put the boat in right from our campsite, and went out on the water whenever we wanted.  It was here I caught my first fish – a catfish, when I was 7.

I loved to go out on the lake with my Dad. He’d get up early to go fish and I’d go with him, he’d be surprised I even wanted to go fishing, let alone get up that early.  My spot was right on the bow of that little boat, and I’d rest my chin on my folded arms as we sped across the smooth water into Lake Erie, powered by a little 3 horse motor. There was a spot just outside the outlet my Dad surmised was a weed bed – the bigger fish would chase the smaller fish there, and we had much luck, pulling in fish after fish, most of them Sailor’s Delight.

My job was to throw and pull the anchor, a sledgehammer head tied to a length of yellow nylon rope. One day, on our way back in, he asked me if I’d pulled up the anchor, and a deer in the headlights look was my answer. I frantically pulled and pulled and pulled until I retrieved the frayed end of the yellow rope. (You had one job!)  He wasn’t mad though, and just laughed. Somewhere, deep in the muck at the bottom of the Sandy Creek Outlet, lies my dad’s sledgehammer anchor. The next one was a coffee can filled with cement. He was thrifty.

He instilled in us the love for camping (well, some of us) and now that I have a travel trailer of my own, I long to revisit Sterling State Park.  So recently, I checked out campsite on the map in the Michigan DNR online reservation system, and found that the park layout looked totally different.  The campground loop now is next to the day use area, nowhere close to how I remembered it. The other night, looking through Michigan State Parks: A Complete Recreation Guide, I found the layout I remembered so well. Published in 1989, the book contained a map of the park how I remembered it, from the mid 80s.  The below screen shot shows the new campground and also the fading remnants of where we used to camp years ago.  And also where I lost the anchor.

We have reservations for late August and I was lucky enough to get a lakefront campsite. I can’t wait to visit and see how it’s changed.  A few of you reading this may remember those times – as you spent time with me there a weekend or two. Thank you for those memories.