My birthday was last Wednesday, and for my birthday, I convinced my lovely wife, Silvia, to head “up north” (as we say here in Michigan). We spent four days in East Tawas on the shores of Lake Huron, going to the beach, enjoying our state parks, and, of course operating some Parks on the Air.
Bay City State Recreation Area (US-3305)
To get to East Tawas, you take I-75 north until you get close to Bay City, then head east on US-23. It only takes 2-1/2 hours to get there, but I thought I’d make a POTA stop along the way. I consulted the POTA app’s map feature and found exactly what I was looking for—the Bay City State Recreation Area (US-3305).
This park, located on the southern edge of Saginaw Bay, is just north of Bay City. To get there, Google Maps actually routed us through the city. The park has both a large campground and a day use area. The day use area has a couple of picnic shelters, and I was hoping to set up in one of the shelters, but since we were there on a Sunday, both shelters were reserved.
No matter. I found a nice, shady spot with a picnic table near the southernmost part of the park that was out of the way and set up there. I made my first contact just before 11:00 am and logged my 10th contact a little less than a half hour later. Overall, I made 26 contacts—10 on 40 meters and 16 on 20 meters—in an hour and 45 minutes.
That’s not a great rate, but I did take time out to go to the beach for a little bit and eat the lunch I brought with me. It also included a nice chat with a woman who stopped by to chat about ham radio. She was a Bay City resident who’d come down to enjoy the beach, and after talking with someone on the phone for a while, she came over to talk to me.
As it turned out, her late husband was a ham. I asked if she knew his callsign, but she said that she didn’t remember it. I should have written down her name, but that didn’t seem quite appropriate at the time. At any rate, it was a nice way to end my visit to Bay City.
East Tawas State Harbor (US-6812)
The place we stayed while we were in East Tawas was the Tawas Bay Beach Resort. One reason for choosing this spot is that it is right next to the East Tawas State Harbor (US-6812). I didn’t’ have to drive anywhere, just haul my stuff over to the park, which I did early the next morning. I activated this park last year, and while it wasn’t a great experience, I did manage a legal activation.
No such luck this time. The noise was S9+, and I couldn’t hear a single signal. I tried changing the orientation of the antenna and the noise blanker, but nothing worked. I packed up after about 15 minutes and headed back to my hotel room.
Tawas Point State Park (US-1545)
All was not lost, however. Silvia and I headed over to Tawas Point State Park (US-1545). The park is a short, scenic drive from our hotel.
Once we got there, we set up our beach chairs and headed out into the water for a while. After a bit of that, I set up the radio and made my first contact at 12:35 pm.
Over the next three hours, I made 51 contacts, but the cool thing is that I had quite a few visitors, including two hams. I spent quite a bit of time with these visitors, so while my rate (17 contacts/hour) wasn’t all that great, I still had a lot of fun explaining Parks on the Air to both hams and non-hams.
Another cool thing about this state park is that it’s home to a lighthouse, meaning that I can also claim a lighthouse activation on the Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society website.. The Tawas Point Lighthouse was built in 1876 and will be celebrating it’s 150th anniversary next year. I plan to be back next year to help them celebrate.
Harrisville State Park (US-1501)
The next day, Silvia and I drove up to Harrisville State Park (US-1501). It’s about 45 minutes north of East Tawas. According to its website, the park was established in 1921 and is one of Michigan’s oldest state parks. The beach there is quite rocky, much rockier than the Tawas beaches, so I’m glad I brought my sand shoes.
We found a shady spot, and I headed out into the water for a bit. One of the things I like about Michigan beaches is finding fossils. Many of the rocks have visible fossils, and the Harrisville beach didn’t disappoint. I found two very nice rocks to add to my collection.
Harrisville has a nice picnic shelter, but I decided to set up in a clearing a short way away. Being a little out of the way, I didn’t think that it would get much foot traffic,, meaning that people would be less likely to walk into my antenna. It was very shady there, too, which was nice.
I made my first contact there at 12:52 pm, and three hours and 20 minutes later, I made #40. That was a little disappointing, but again, I had a couple of nice visits. The first guy to wander over was a tower climber in his younger days. He said that he’d always been kind of interested in getting a license, so I gave him one of my cards.
On the way home, I said to Silvia that I’m getting a lot more visitors here than I do when I activate parks closer to home. She replied, “Well, people here are on vacation and want to be entertained. You’re the entertainment!”
Tawas Point State Park (US-1545)
On Wednesday—my birthday—Silvia decided that she’d had enough POTA, so I drove over to Tawas Point SP by myself. This time, I thought I’d try to find a spot closer to the lighthouse. The problem is that the lighthouse is located in a big, open space, and there’s not much shade. I did spot a shady patch, though, and dragged a heavy picnic table about 50 feet over to it, only to find that there was a lot of poison ivy there. Since I’ve almost recovered from my last bout of poison ivy, I decided to abandon the picnic table and set up in my previous spot.
This day, the bands were in pretty good condition, and I made 55 contacts in just two hours, bringing my total to 172 contacts in 4 activations.
I also had several visitors during those two hours. One of them was also a ham who said that he was going to activate later that day. I just checked, and he did indeed activate, making 11 phone contacts.
This got me thinking about who are the park leaders at the three parks that I activated this trip. As it turns out, I’m the park leader at the Tawas Point State Park with 165 contacts over four activations. I’m not even on the leader board at either Bay City or Harrisville.
I guess that I’m going to have to get back up there and activate those parks more. I’ve been trying to convince Silvia to buy a summer place up there, and we saw something that looked almost perfect for us, but someone had already made an offer on the place. We’re going to keep looking, and if we do manage to find something, I’ll be able to extend my lead at Tawas Point SP, and maybe catch up a little at the other parks.