Meteors, Mileage, and Manistee

The winding down of summer is coming sooner than I expected. Knowing this, there was something I had to do before the weather changed. My two friends and a mutual friend of ours decided to plan a two-day camping trip in the Manistee Trails. Located in Brethren which is a part of Manistee County, these trails have some of the most unique views of northern Michigan I’ve experienced to date. I departed from Kalamazoo that Friday to link up with them in Holland. Ryan and our mutual friend Brayden both attend Hope College and are members of the Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity. We took two cars since our gear was taking up a lot of space, I ended up riding with our other friend Owen. We arrived at about six o’clock and started our hike to find a nice camping spot. It only took about two miles to find one we were content with. It overlooked the river off of this cliff that separated the site and the walking areas. We ended up diving into the river to cool off from the long drive and journey. The water felt immaculate along with the stunning views surrounding the river canyon. There was a strong current that almost pulled me away when I tried to swim against it. Luckily, I realized I was getting swept and acted fast.

The whole time we were there, we put on a lot of music that fit the scenes tremendously. The main artist put on our playlist was Goth Babe featuring hits such as "Car Camping", "Sunnn", and "Swimming". I definitely recommend these as new tracks for your playlists. He is an independent artist from Nashville who came onto the scene in 2015. He is tremendously versatile with his sound on each record.

Later that night, as we were setting up the fire and sleeping arrangements, Ryan informed us that a meteor shower was going to take place around midnight. After preparing our site, we went to the cliff to witness it. The first meteor came out as soon as the clock hit 11:30 and we saw it simultaneously. The rest that followed was pure bliss. They would come in waves of six every ten minutes or so. Up until that I had never witnessed such a beautiful natural event. We went to bed around 1 and got up around 7 the next day. We ended up walking a decent amount and found another enticing camp spot. This one was lower to the ground and right next to the shore of the river. The Manistee River was one of the most refreshing bodies of water I’ve dove into, the water was also very clear. Like I said before, the stream was rapid so you’d have to be careful and swim near the shore more than the outer distance. We went fishing for trout on breaks between hikes and resting at our camping sites.

This was one of the best camping trips I’ve been on. Keep on popping into WIDR FM to hear our wonderful DJs speak their taste in music as well as their respected writings in our blog posting. Keep on truckin’.