Camping at Sleepy Bear Campground

Ping's first camping experience in the States! Ping and the girls had wanted to go camping since last year but there are so many places to explore that we never made it last summer. So one of the first few things we planned this summer is camping!! Ming had also mentioned about Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore last year so we decided to go there for our camping trip.

Ping wanted to make reservations at the Platte River campground within the National Lakeshore border but it was fully booked. Since we had quite a bunch of people, Ping didn't want to take the risk of driving all the way there and not having a place to stay. So we ended up getting a campsite at a private campground – Sleepy Bear Campground. This campground is a pretty good location as it is not too far away from the national park but we have to drive everywhere because it is basically in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by meadows and woods.

The drive to the park is suppose to take only about 4.5 hrs through the scenic route but due to road damaged from the crazy weather Michigan is experiencing recently, we had to detour and end up taking almost 5 hours to get to the campground. The drive on US-31, once we get out of US-127 is very different. The roads are hilly and there are meadows and hills for the side view. Definitely much more fun than driving on US-69/US-96!!! Thankfully, we got there before it got really dark and had time to build our tent, which was very comfortable! All 4 of us had plenty of space to sleep, with more space to put our stuff too. Ming followed Ping's car and helped us set up the fire, which kept us warm later in the night when the temperature drop – definitely lower than Ping expected because Ping only bought a thin sweater.

Just as we finished putting up our tent (the dark blue one, at the back) and unpack our sleeping bags, the other car driven by Tai Lou, with the guys and Pei Hua, arrived. Helped them pitch their tent (which is super huge because all 9 of us had dinner in it the second day!), or more like help 'slow' them down in pitching their tent since the more people it is, the more luan chi cha we become but it is more lau juak mar! Once the tents are up, it's dinner time!

We knew that we would be arriving late and might be too hungry to be cooking so we made some stuff for the first night. Jo made char bee hoon, Ping made pasta salad (actually Ping still calls it macaroni salad since back in M'sia, irregardless of what shape they look like, we always call pasta as macaroni, unless it is spaghetti or lasagna) with Italian dressing and Pei Hua brought mashed potato. It was Ping's first time making the pasta salad and Ping likes it! It was actually Kristi's idea. Ping was asking for Kristi's (she's the best person to go to when it comes to cooking!) suggestion on a non-milk or cheese-based dressing for macaroni salad and she suggested Italian. Ping didn't want to have too much meat in it so Ping used tuna and of course, lots of vege!!

Italian Tuna Pasta

Cooked elbow pasta

Cucumbers, Carrots and Bell peppers chopped into small pieces

Corn kernels

1 can of tuna (drained the water)

Italian dressing

Mix em all up and it's tasty!