My husband and I have been taking camping trips together since 1993, when we were still dating and in college.
Though we still occasionally use a tent for our adventures, we’ve become huge fans of staying in rental state park cabins.
We’ve rented lodging all over the state of Michigan over the past 20 some-odd years. Rustic cabins with wood stoves, hike-in only cabins, modern cabins with electricity, heat and even self contained bathrooms, a tiny house, a former ranger residence, tipis and rental tents.
So when I had an unexpected long weekend to play with recently, we jumped at the chance for us to have a weekend cabin adventure.
Because of time constraints and soaring gas prices, we opted to keep the trip as close to home as possible.
Earlier this year, I made a list of “recreation goals” that I wanted to accomplish during 2026:
“Recreation Goals 2026” Update (June, 2026)
This was our third camping trip in 2026 during a full moon event! 🌙 🌝
We decided to revisit the camper cabin in Waterloo Recreation Area, which we’d last stayed in April, 2019.
Waterloo is a sprawling recreation area with several rustic and modern campgrounds – and cabins – and as of the past few years, tiny houses available for rent.
In addition, Waterloo is home to the lengthy Waterloo-Pinckney hiking trail popular with thru-hiking enthusiasts. There are also equestrian and cycling trails in the recreation area.
There are several lakes for swimming and boating too!
As for our weekend lodging…
Camper cabins are three room cabins with heat and electricity. They are typically located in scenic spots in campgrounds, often overlooking lakes.
Ours overlooked Big Portage Lake. We had a nice partially covered deck with a table and chairs overlooking the lake.
Our cabin was situated about 200 feet or so from the campground road behind lots of trees, so we were very isolated, which is exactly how we love it! 😍
What I didn’t love was having to take care of the previous renters’ garbage 🗑️! 😲 Oh they placed it in the bin all right – but they didn’t use a trash bag 🤢
Thankfully I always bring extras. I put on a pair of gloves and took care of the trash and we drove to the trash receptacle to ditch it. Good riddance! I’m glad it was mostly papers, nothing too…moist or smelly. No diapers 😅
Then I went about setting up our bunks:
We really wanted to just unwind and relax on this weekend since we’ve both been busy with work.
The cabin description on the DNR site states that there is a coffee pot in the cabin. We found none. But just like with the extra trash bags, I was prepared for this. I brought Folgers coffee bags and a couple of cans of single serve coffee. I don’t mess around when it comes to morning coffee!
After lounging around the site, I decided to take a walk to the beach.
Since Michigan weather doesn’t care about the calendar, you’d never know that it wasn’t summer by looking at the lake. I didn’t take pictures of the day use beach, since it was pretty crowded! There were actually a few people swimming (scouts honor).
When Sleeping Beauty aka my husband woke up, we drove over to the Eddy nature center later Saturday afternoon just to take a little walk and look at the lake (Mill Lake).
What next? Fire time!
We recently bought a new-to-us car which has lots of extra cargo space. So we decided to bring our zero-gravity chairs .
The most excitement we encountered on this trip was hearing coyotes howling at night. Their yapping was almost immediately followed by gunfire. Was someone wanting to scare them because of their livestock? Questions abound!
It wasn’t the most adventure-filled or exciting camping trip we’ve ever had. But it was as that old Cars song says – “Just what (we) needed.”
Here are some interior pics of the cabin:
Other than that cheap futon and the trash incident, this weekend gets four stars out of five! 🤩
