Our family recently made another visit to the Yogi Bear campground near Grayling - an annual tradition for us for the past 9 years or so. This time there was a surprise - new owners. We could see the difference upon first driving in - the tree that was leaning over the road (a potential RV squasher) was gone. A huge new playscape had been installed, to the major delight of our two boys. A new concrete slab was poured for basketball. They also made a big change to the camp store, moving the game room to what was an employees only area and knocking down the walls of the old game room to increase the size of the store and add things like a soft-serve ice cream machine. They also added a small number of rental bikes.
We've always enjoyed our trips to Grayling because of the laid back nature of the campground. Now it looks like the new owners plan on investing in the place to make it more modern - probably something that needs to be done in order to keep visitor numbers up. We noticed this year that for the first time, there were quite a few spots available during the weekend. We're not sure that this is because of the high gas prices, that the campground is getting "old", or maybe because of the ownership change.
One thing we'd really like to see - Crawford County figuring out a way to maintain their roads to a respectable level. This Yogi park is located about 5 miles off of I-75. For about 3 miles of the drive, your on a blacktop road that is little more than just pothole patches. Then about 2000 feet before the campground the road becomes dirt. Every year, it seems like the washboard dirt road becomes worse and worse. Again this year, going about 5 MPH seemed like it was too fast and everything was going to fall apart on the road. Amazingly, we saw a grader on the day we left, but it was a case of too little, too late. The 'after' part of the road was barely better than the 'before'. We were told by the employees at the campground that they've complained numerous times and even had a petition signed by campers delivered to Crawford County - but that the complaints basically fall on deaf ears. The sad thing is the shape of this road is probably driving people away from a valuable business and from people going out and spending money in Crawford County. The road is bad enough that you actually think twice about going out, just to avoid driving on 4 Mile Road. Get a clue Crawford County!
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