The Island With No Paved Roads Where Camping Is Free

Bois Blanc Island — Why is it that we all seem to remember those camping trips we took as kids more than any of the vacations our parents paid for? Packing the stuff in the trunk, piling in the car, driving to the great outdoors, pitching the tent, and sleeping outside creates a fonder memory than checking in to the hotel and ordering room service.

My parents took us camping a lot when we were kids. In the Lower Peninsula, the Upper Peninsula, out to Maine and back and out to California too. We camped in tents, set up in the rain, had campfires in the morning, and roasted marshmallows at night, stressed mom and dad out more than they deserved, and we remember those trips fondly more than anything else.

Last week I took my son camping on Bois Blanc Island. If you’re like most people you’ve probably never heard the name and have no idea where it might be. That’s okay and quite understandable. There are only about 100 year-round residents, one ferry route there and back, and not a single paved road on the entire island. They are the dustiest roads in all of Michigan.

The ferry to Bois Blanc Island (colloquially referred to as “Bob-lo” by locals) leaves from Cheboygan (colloquially referred to as Che-Vegas or Che-Bang-Bang) generally makes three trips a day during the fall. It’s about a 45 minute ride from Cheboygan to the dock on Bois Blanc and a five minute drive to Point Aux Pins, the only “town” on the island.

It’s hard to think of Point Aux Pins as a town in the way we normally think of a town. There’s no grocery store or gas station with chips and pop inside. There’s no stop light and no main street of any discernible kind. There is, however, a post office, an Episcopal church, and a school with one teacher and six students.

Outside of town there’s the Outpost BBI which functions as a mini-market, liquor store, restaurant, and bar. It’s only open Thursday to Sunday, however. A little farther out on W. Huron Dr. there’s the Lakeside Tavern which fills the gap left by the Outpost BBI Monday to Wednesday. It looks a little like a three-bedroom, one-story house on the outside and a dive bar on the inside. They’ve got a kitchen, a fryer, a full bar, and both a pool table and a shuffleboard table. Outside there are trucks, ORVs, and side by sides parked in a gravel lot off a gravel road across from Lake Huron.

That’s about all the civilization there is on Bob-lo.

On the north side of the island there’s Bible Beach. It’s only about 7 miles from Point Aux Pins but it’s about 20 minutes in the car. Gravel roads slow you down in a way pavement doesn’t. Twenty-five mph is just about the maximum speed on Lime Kiln Road. And though it’s technically considered a campground or officially called “Bible Beach State Camping,” it isn’t really much of a campground for those used to an RV (that’s not real camping) or a state park.

There’s no running water, no services, no park ranger, no office in a little cabin-like hut, and no place to pay your fee. There is in fact no fee to pay: Camping is free at Bible Beach. The only thing you need to do when you arrive is call the fire department for a free burn permit. Basically it means you talk to the fire chief to make sure the conditions are fine and he gives you the go-ahead as long as all is good.

It’s incredible what can be offered for completely free when the barriers to entry are so high and impassable for the majority of the Americans in 2026. You’ve got to get to Cheboygan, then take a ferry across Huron, and then drive 20 minutes on gravel roads, and then camp in a tent without any electricity or running water.

Many would love the view that Bible Beach provides, but few are willing to do what it takes to spend the night there. So it’s empty and unspoiled and quiet and peaceful. It’s exactly like camping ought to be.

There were only two other people at Bible Beach while we were there, a young couple in a site down the road. We never heard them and only knew of their existence because we hiked down along the beach that afternoon.

We set up our tent right across from Lake Huron, ate the sandwiches we packed at home, hiked along the shore, skipped rocks in the water, built a campfire when the sun went down, roasted marshmallows, talked for a while as the orange embers burned and cracked in the night, got in the tent once the coals started to finally dissipate, and went to sleep around 9:30 p.m.

It got down to about 49 degrees that night and while our bags are good down to 30, it was pretty nippy, so my son got into my sleeping bag with me to keep warm sometime in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the most luxurious sleeping in the world packed like sardines inside a sleeping bag with a six-year-old, but I suppose it’s the little stuff like that which adds up to make camping trips more memorable than the ones spent in climate-controlled hotels.

The sounds of the night spent on Bible Beach were of the waves from Huron and nothing else. The waves are strong in the fall and they were loud in the way night makes all things louder. Everyone who has camped knows that the cracking of sticks in the woods when deer move through are amplified when you are in a tent. Every sound in the woods is louder when are sleeping outside. The sounds of the waves were like a roaring surround sound in the dark night without any street lamps, music, or passing cars to break the scene.

We woke up the next morning as the sky was brightening and walked down to the rocky shore where we sat on a log and ate a few granola bars looking over the water at Mackinac Island to the northwest, the sky bright orange in the northeast.

We packed up the tent in about 10 minutes, rolled our sleeping bags, tossed them in the car, checked over the site to make sure we didn’t leave any belongings or trash behind, hopped in the car, and headed back toward Point Aux Pins on the dusty gravel road that brought us out. We were back on the mainland a couple hours later and then home after that. It was a quick little trip just us two.

What is it that makes camping trips, whether they are month-long excursions or just one night outside, more memorable? Thinking back on my childhood and now on my current fatherhood, I think it might be the fact that they demand something of us. We have to do something, not just pay for something. We have to set up the tent, we have to build the fire, we have to plan for the weather, we have to find a good site, we have to do things to make the trip happen. We have to plan ahead, find the gear, and trek it here and there.

It’s the quiet too. Of course it’s the quiet. The lack of cell service, the absence of JBL speakers, the iPad, Netflix, or X. Talking in a way you don’t usually talk because you have nothing else to do. It makes you closer. Sitting around the campfire watching the flames like we humans used to before we had all the stuff of modern civilization to distract us. The night that’s so much darker and the stars that are so much brighter.

And it’s the stuff that goes a little wrong too. Packing up in the rain is awful at the time and certain to induce bickering, but you remember it all later and laugh. Wet firewood that smokes a bunch doesn’t make the most picturesque campfire, but it’s warm. And sharing a sleeping bag with a six-year-old isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but it’s not going to last forever.