Memorial Day Weekend Camping in Pokagon State Park

We return to an old Indiana favorite for the long holiday weekend

CCC constructed bridge in Pokagon State Park, May 2023. Photo by Sarah Styf

We knew we would have to make our reservations for the holiday weekend as soon as possible, but apparently we didn’t get online soon enough. By the time I had gotten onto my computer at the end of November, nearly every state park that we wanted to visit in May had been booked. One of the few options left was a spot in the corner of Pokagon State Park, right across from that campground loop’s single dump station.

I jumped on it.

Ever since our family’s return to Indiana, Jeff and I had been talking about our desire to return to one of his favorite state parks. Pokagon was the site of many happy childhood memories for my husband, and when we lived in Fort Wayne, it became the site of additional memories for our family of four. But at nearly three hours north from Indianapolis, we had to be intentional about when we would make a visit.

In Indiana, Memorial Day weekend also marks the official beginning of summer. While I still had teaching duties to complete the following Tuesday, our kids were ready to begin their vacation, grabbing their bikes as soon as we were parked in our spot. While they took off down one of the bike trails connecting the different campground loops, we did our best to level out the camper, open everything up to let in the cool spring air, and prepare for their return. Then we finally hopped on our bikes to go looking for our pre-teen and teenager who had gotten themselves hopelessly lost in one of the loops. Once we were all back home, dinner, a campfire, and then crashing into bed signaled for us the start of a good family weekend.

Apparently, our family really had been exhausted because even I slept in until 9:00. We ate a late breakfast before jumping on our bikes to show the kids the lodge and toboggan run. There are a lot of things to love about this particular state park, but one of its best features is the bike trails that run throughout the park, connecting most major locations and providing safe hiking and biking for all ages. We walked through the major common areas inside the lodge, showing them the restaurant, the downstairs pool, and the game room, before we heading out the back to check out the smaller beach at the bottom of the hill.

Not really eager to leave the park, but aware that we needed to fill up with gas at some point, we took the short drive into Angola so that we could make the promised visit to one of Jeff’s favorite childhood haunts: Scoops Ice Cream. Our son shocked us by turning down his favorite, Blue Moon, in exchange for something new. Apparently, two years of having much easier access to his favorite ice cream has made him more likely to try new flavors when given the chance. It had been years since we had visited, but it was still a perfectly delicious stop.

On our way back through the state park, we made a stop at the nature center. With kids who are in middle school and now high school, we aren’t always sure how long we’ll be able to do these learning stops, but they were all over the completely renovated nature center. And I was thoroughly impressed. The new nature center has even more hands-on activities for kids as well as important history lessons about the indigenous people who lived on the land before the start of westward expansion. And it still has a large window to look out at the many animals that inhabit the park.

We hadn’t done much for the day, but the rest of the family was ready to relax while I wanted to give the park’s Hell’s Point Challenge a try. The eight-mile hike includes parts of six of the parks nine hiking trails and spans through the whole park. The hike is supposed to be completed in one day, but I took that to mean 24-hours, which meant that I could split the hike in half so that I could do other stuff during each of the days as well. Since no one else was jumping on board, I decided to take the hike myself, hiking just over four miles from our campsite and visiting three of the six waypoints as proof of my hike. (Instagram reel of that first half of the hike can be found here.) The hike was incredible, and I had no regrets about leaving my family behind to start cooking our dinner of beer brats without me.

The next morning, while Jeff took the kids back into Angola to get tools to fix one bike (because one cannot be without a bike in Pokagon), I attempted to finish the second half of the trail. With the return of my family before I expected, I cut the hike short by one mile, with the determination to make another attempt at it the next morning. (I did, however, claim my sticker at the nature center on my way back to the campsite.)

Instead of finishing the hike, the kids and I road our bikes to the horse barn so we could do a trail ride. (Jeff is not a fan of horses and was perfectly content to read back at the camper.) The three of us enjoyed the time on the trail and I survived being on one of the biggest horses in the group.

We wrapped up our day of activities by taking a visit to the beach, braving the crowds and cool water so that our son could swim (while dragging Jeff into the water with him) and I could stand along the shoreline with our daughter, both of us enjoying the water on our feet and calves. Our son finally decided the water was cold enough and he was ready for fajitas and one last campfire, which we kept going until every piece of firewood we had with us was gone.

I knew it was a little crazy, but I set my alarm the next morning so I could make another attempt at the second half of the Hell’s Point Challenge. I wanted to complete it and I knew that the only way to do that was do get up early and head out. I got started later than I intended, but I rode my bike on the bike path portion of Trail 3 and parked outside of the lodge before walking the rest of the way. Nearly four miles later (six if you include the 1.25 miles I rode my bike each way), I had officially completed the challenge, which meant I could now legitimately use the sticker I had received at the nature center. (Instagram reel of the second half of the hike can be found here.) Once again, the hike proved the beautiful biodiversity in the state park and continued to dispel the myth that Indiana is only cornfields and basketball.

With a 2:00 checkout, we knew that we had a little time, but the downside to our incredibly quiet spot right across from the dump station was that we suddenly had a long line of campers to wait through before we could leave. We finally asked one family if they would wait for us to pull out and allow us to cut in line so that we could take our turn and exit. They happily obliged and we were on our way home.

It really was a nice and quiet spot for most of the weekend.

The weekend wasn’t perfect. We were all tired and moody as the weekend started and we had a hard time coming to a consensus on what we all wanted to do together. But as our kids get older, we start to worry that they won’t want to spend full weekends away with us, camping with their parents when they could be home playing video games, hanging out with friends, or just participating in general school busyness. This weekend they were completely on board with spending time together as a family, riding their bikes in non-stop loops around the campground, and sitting by the fire making s’mores. We even got out Oregon Trail for two rounds, never actually making it to Oregon before we were all dead.

But I’ll take whatever time I can get with our family, because I know the years are going to just keep quickly ticking by. After all, we only have four more years before we send one off to college. I’ll take all the time camping with them that I can get.

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