My husband and I booked a “modern cabin” at Sleepy Hollow State Park near Lansing, MI and had an absolute blast! It’s been years since we’ve used a cabin as nice as this for a winter adventure – RIP to the “Kick and Glide Lodge,” which friends of ours owned “Up North” for a number of years before selling the property and the old cabin being torn down.

The campgrounds might be closed at Sleepy Hollow – or covered in snow:

But for those hardy folks who love to brave the elements, there is a lovely modern cabin available to rent year round:

In the winter months, aside from a few random sledders, hikers and Nordic skiers, you’re pretty likely to have the surrounding area for this cabin all to yourself. Just be sure to pull the drapes when you’re changing clothes in case a skier or hiker wanders too close to your cabin with their little kid!

Inside, you have radiant heat in the living room, bathroom with shower (yes you read that right – a cabin WITH a bathroom inside), and also in both of the bedrooms. Each bedroom had a full sized bed for a bottom bunk, and a twin sized top bunk. Be careful if you’re using the bottom bunk, it’s pretty low clearance even if you’re not Amazonian in height like I am! Thankfully I didn’t bump my head accidentally. Here are a few pics of the cabin interior (after we’d cleaned our stuff out):

Braving the elements meant buying things for getting a campfire going very quickly – in this case, we used long wooden fireplace matches, fire starter fuel cubes (odorless kerosene), and an indoor/outdoor fireplace log. Once we flicked the lighter, the fire was going within SECONDS! Special thanks to the super friendly ranger Rochelle who delivered wood right to our cabin, which saved even more time.

But these little babies REALLY helped me brave the elements:

The best thing was we had lovely, lovely views of Lake Ovid, which is an artificial lake created after a series of land acquisitions in the 1960s and the damming of the Maple River.

I was beyond happy to be in this lovely, lovely place – even if I had to wear three layers of pants, a heavy coat, boot warmers and snowmobile gloves.