Sleeping on the edge of Lake Huron at Forester Park

Pitch a tent at Forester Park and the sound you fall asleep to is Lake Huron working the shoreline a few yards away. The park runs along 68 acres of waterfront on M-25, six miles north of Port Sanilac, and it’s run by Sanilac County rather than the state — which is why a lot of Thumb regulars treat it as their own.

It’s a big campground for a small county: around 200 sites, some grassy and open for the RV crowd, some tucked back in the shade for tents, plus a handful of rustic cabins if you don’t want to haul gear at all. Both 30- and 50-amp hookups are there for the bigger rigs. The draw, though, is the beach. There’s a swimming stretch, nature trails, a playground, and a basketball court, and the whole place has long had a reputation as one of the more wheelchair-accessible campgrounds in the state, with the beach and shower building built to actually get you down to the water. The season runs May through October, and the lakeside sites book up fast for summer weekends.

This is also a sunrise coast — you’re on the eastern edge of the Thumb, facing open water, so the light comes up over the lake instead of down over land. People walk the beach at dawn looking for beach glass and Petoskey-adjacent stones, and the fishing off this part of the shore brings in perch and the occasional salmon working the cold water. Forester itself is barely a wide spot in the road, a former lumber town with a sad old ghost story, but the park is the reason most people slow down here, set up a chair, and stay a while.