So what does a person do while camping at Harrisville State Park once the main mission has been accomplished?

Well. If we’d had another clear night I’d have been out there on the beach getting a second good look at the Milky Way. But we weren’t that fortunate.

Monday, as we were setting up camp under blue skies, a park employee told us that Tuesday would be rainy but Wednesday was going to be nice. We figured we’d get through Tuesday and find something fun to do on Wednesday.

We figured wrong.

During the day Tuesday we kept expecting it to rain, but it was just breezy and cold. The rain held off, but we expected it at any time. It was really too cold to enjoy walking on the beach.

We went to the local library to stay warm as we tried to find something to do. I googled “What is there to do in Harrisville Michigan?” Google came back with 5 things.

1. Sturgeon point lighthouse. Been there, it wasn’t open but we got an amazing image.

2. Harrisville State Park. That’s where we were staying.

3. Cedarbrook Trout Farm. Well, I guess that was a possibility.

4. Bailey School. Saw it through the window, it wasn’t open.

5. Sturgeon Point State Park. Well, that’s where the lighthouse is…so…..

We spent a couple hours at the library, reading magazines and hanging out. When we headed back to camp to make dinner it began to rain.

So we each grabbed some snacks and our reading material and ducked into our tents.

Fourteen hours later it finally stopped raining. Though I like listening to waves while I sleep I really didn’t need to listen to them for that many hours in a row.

And the kicker was that Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday had been. Windy and cold. We decided to go to the local diner for breakfast.

There we asked the waitress what there was to do in Harrisville, and she mentioned a couple of stores. One was an art gallery that we had planned on visiting, another was a resale shop with supposedly cool stuff just waiting to be picked over.

We had hope.

But it turns out neither place was open because we were up there before Memorial Day, the official start to summer. Sigh.

We walked around the nearly empty town and then drove back to the library where I skimmed a book and she read another magazine.

And then we decided to pack it in and go home.

We’d only made one meal at camp. We’d spent way more hours in our tents than we’d planned. It was cold and wet.

We’d accomplished my goal so we could call the trip a success, and sleeping in a real bed in a warm house looked pretty good. It only took us an hour to throw everything in the car and head home.

Of course halfway home we stopped at a roadside park and the sun came out. But that was OK, we felt good about our decision to bail on our last night at camp.

After all, there’s always another adventure waiting in the wings. I could tell you what and where, but that would spoil the story.

And I wouldn’t want to do that.