Sometimes when doing a Parks on the Air or POTA activation you are looking for a quick and easy park to activate and Baraga State Park, US-1486 was just that. As myself and the XYL continued on our annual trip through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and headed toward the Keweenaw Peninsula we decided to take a short break and active an easy to get to park. From looking at the listing of previous POTA activations of this park I’m surprised it doesn’t see more action, given its a quick and easy stop.

Baraga State Park Location

Baraga state park is located in the lower eastern portion of the Keweenaw Peninsula. The park is split up by US-41 with a majority of the park is located on the western side of the road where the state operates a modern campground. On the eastern side of US-41 the park has a small but quickly accessible day use area that is located on southwestern most portion of the Keweenaw Bay. When traveling north on US-41 the day use area acts as a small rest area with about a half a dozen picnic tables. For activating POTA I like this location because you can simply pull off the main road, be at the parking lot and within 20 feet of some picnic tables to setup. I specifically like to setup on the northern section that provides a little bit of seclusion from some nearby trees. Its a beautiful location in an area of the Keweenaw Bay that usually doesn’t get too temperamental.

Day Use Area

For this activation and others for this trip I used my usual Camelion telescoping vertical antenna and 16 ground radials. For quick stops this step goes up fairly quickly and tears down with ease.

Telescoping Antenna Near the Keweenaw Bay

For this pit stop along our journey I spent nearly an hour activating the park and made almost 60 contacts, primarily on 20m and one instate park-to-park contact on 40m. The 40m contact was operating from US-0346, Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, I was familiar with this park as I had activated it before and when I saw the location pop up as a POTA spot I just had to make the contact! In total I made over a dozen park-to-park contacts. The number of contacts that I made was likely due to the fact that it was a weekend and band conditions were favorable.

Mapped Contacts

Overall this activation was successful. Given the proximity of the park and the ease of getting setup we will plan to be back to activate this park!

’73 and POTA on!