Bass River Recreation Area

2012 01 17  We parked at the end of North Cedar Drive, it was cold, windy, and raining, so we geared up for the weather.  The lake was covered in ice except the edges, we found rocks on the shore.  This place was a gravel pit. 

 View of Bass Lake from the parking area

On Bing maps I had seen a peninsula of land going out a long way into Bass Lake. Some people call this Max Lake, but since it is Bass River Recreation Area, I'm calling it Bass Lake.

 That's where I want to go, upper right hand side of the photo.

 Broken ice along the shore, no we are not walking on the ice.

The pink line is where we walked. 

There's the peninsula.  We are getting closer.

Once we were on the peninsula it wasn't easy going, there were willows, logs, cattails and very muddy places.  We found several rocky beaches and rocks galore.  We soon had our pockets full of rocks, I found a nice Petoskey Stone.  Marie found one that she thinks might be a Pudding Stone.  We found lots of rocks with fossils.  

We tried to get to the point of the peninsula but the water was too deep. We decided to turn back, the rain had stopped but the wind got stronger and ice pellets were stinging our faces, ow. We could see the car parked across the lake, it looked very far away over the wide expanse of gray watery ice.


 Looking across the ice from the peninsula to the parking area.

We walked at a steady pace back to the car and even though it looked far away it didn't seem long before we were warm inside with the heater going.

Going home.  Another fun, exciting, and wet day.

Bass River Recreation Area, a 1,665-acre site, consists of open meadows, open brush land, mature hardwoods, small ponds and 300-acre Max Lake. It has approximately three miles of frontage on the Grand River. The park is used primarily for boating, hiking, mountain biking and horse back riding, fishing.  Owned by the state of Michigan.