GuideEpoufette Bay Campground
Peppermint Shores Campground on the south shore of Michigan's Upper Peninsu
Our first stop was Peppermint Shores Campground on the south shore of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. After roughly seven hours on the road, we arrived after sunset. The campground sat along Lake Michigan, and after setting up camp we did what most people do after a long drive: We grabbed chairs. What happened next was unexpected. The sky was completely cloudless. Living in the Cleveland area, I'd forgotten what a truly dark sky looked like. Not a suburban sky. Not a"pretty clear" sky. A genuinely dark sky. The stars seemed endless. Thousands of them. Then we started noticing movement. Shooting stars. Satellites. Long bright streaks crossing the horizon. Trails lingering in the darkness. Every few minutes something new appeared overhead. The show never stopped. The three of us sat there in our camp chairs listening to the gentle waves of Lake Michigan lapping onto the shoreline only a few yards away while staring upward. Nobody talked much. There wasn't much to say. We were all awestruck. Three grown men sitting beside Lake Michigan after a seven-hour drive, watching a cosmic performance that simply does not exist back home. No phones. No emails. No deadlines. No notifications. Just waves, stars, and silence.
