My dad has been talking about this logging museum since we got back to the States, so Sunday we loaded up the car and headed north to Hartwick Pines State Park in Grayling, MI.

The Visitor Center features an excellent display about the forest, local wildlife, logging and life in the logging camps of the 1930s.

Nico was interested in the animal pelts, including this bear.

We walked through the forest – mostly beech and maple trees – to get to the Logging Museum. Nico found a couple walking sticks, which were also handy for smacking trees and plants. Paul mostly just ran to keep up. We saw chipmunks, squirrels, lots of birds, moss, 100-year-old tree stumps and other cool stuff.

The Logging Museum comprises a collection of buildings that recreate a logging camp.

The boys did laundry 1930s-style, and then Nico found a checkers game in the bunkhouse.

My mom and I pretended we were working at the camp. We wouldn’t have lasted through the winter. The men slept three to a bunk, and the bunks were small. The snoring alone would have driven me stark raving mad. It would have been one of those urban legends about the crazy kitchen girl who murdered all the men in the middle of the night.

Mom didn’t take long to hook up with a logger.

The men used these huge wheels to transport logs to horse-drawn sleds or to the river.

It was a lot of time in the van for the boys (and the grown-ups), but we kept ourselves entertained.