Walking the Au Gres scenic outlook

On the way home from our recent trip to Oscoda, Michigan, we camped one night south of Au Gres, a small town along Michigan’s Lake Huron coast.

Map — *The yellow circle marks the general area known as Point Au Gres. We camped on the southern side of the circle, and the town of Au Gres is a little bit inland.*

While eating breakfast the next morning at Stormy’s Diner, I asked the one lady who seemed to be doing everything how the town’s name was pronounced (she seemed satisfied with me saying “Aw Gray”). In the ensuing small talk, she recommended we check out a scenic walk just outside of town before heading home.

Scenic outlook map — *The pier is marked as ‘Scenic Outlook’ on Google Maps.*

We followed her directions and arrived at a roughly half-mile-long pier sticking out into Lake Huron, giving nice views of the shoreline and one offshore lighthouse. Foliage along the narrow walkway was close and dense, and we recorded eastern kingbirds, northern yellow warblers, barn swallows, song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds.

It was a nice little activity to wring out of Au Gres, which otherwise I wasn’t seeing much of interest in. Here are photos of the whole thing.

We got on the road into the parking lot around 10:03 a.m.

We drove past a parking lot for vehicles with trailers that had quite a few cars scattered throughout it, but the regular parking lot was empty when we got there, and a little overgrown.