Turtle Lake Campground

Beulah, Michigan

Turtle Lake Campground boasts a large equestrian campground as well as a non-equestrian campground.

The equestrian campground features a large arena, a round pen, and a large turn out area. There are a limited number of corrals. Campsites without corrals have highlines or you can put up a portable corral/electric fence. There is a bath house and porta-potties.

There are 75 miles of horse trails. The trail map they provide is pretty useless. We relied on Gaia and AllTrails apps on our phones. There are hitching posts at Jodi’s Tangled Antler Tavern if you want to do a Ride and Eat.

There is a beach area outside the equestrian campground where you can ride your horse and take the horse for a swim. We don’t feel comfortable going swimming with our horses, but we did ride them to the lake and let them dip their toes in the water.

We put up our portable corrals. The campers next to us had five horses - all on the high lines.

This is the turn out area. There is a nice wash rack in front of it.

We had water/electric hook-up. There is WIFI in the campground, but it was not that great, so we relied on our Winegard.

We did two trail rides. The trails are wide, flat and sandy. Wide enough for buggies and snow mobiles use them in the winter.

The bugs weren’t too bad and the trails were in good condition, even if they aren’t marked at all. We relied on our apps to keep track of where we were.

The horses appreciated the turn out areas. They liked the deep sand and the chance to take a roll.

We went into Beulah to check out the L’chayim Deli. You would think a deli with this name would be kosher, but it isn’t and none of the employees are Jewish. So, I was a bit disappointed. The owners are named Jonathan Clark and David Scott. I think this is what they “think” a Jewish deli should be like or maybe this is their best approximation of one. They make their bagels fresh every day and we did buy some bagels simply because fresh bagels are hard to find in the mid-West. The bagels are decent, not as good as Noah’s, but OK.

We made a small 30 minute outing to Traverse City to visit the Great Wolf Lodge to play MagiQuest. Hurrah! And, we may hit another Wolf Lodge in Ohio to continue our MagiQuesting in a couple of weeks. We spent four hours playing the game and were both pretty tuckered out.