Lower Peninsula Michigan: Friday, June 17, 2022 | |
Although this is a deciduous tree, it is one of of the giant trees along the Old Growth Forest Trail in Hartwick Pines State Park. Most of the old giants on this trail were hemlocks. | |
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Hiking and biking. That’s the plan, man, and we’re stickin’ to it. First the hike. Hartwick Pines State Park offers a half dozen trail loops. We put two conjoined loops together to make a 4-mile figure-8. The Old Growth Forest Trail loop was a no-brainer choice. I love old-growth forests. Sadly, there are so few old-growth stands left that we often go out of our way to hike through a stand.
Before cars and roads, it is easy to wonder how difficult it must have been for people to bushwhack their way around the wilderness. The interesting thing about the original forest is that the canopy was so high and thick that there was little undergrowth. In the old-growth stands that I have had the privilege to hike in, you could practically drive a Mac truck through the forest bottom.
The Old Growth Trail in Hartwick Pines was like that. The big majestic hemlock trees made walking through the forest a breeze. We didn’t need an actual trail. The connecting Mertz Grade Trail loop was thicker and did require a path. The resulting four miles cleared the cobwebs that our two lazy days wove in our heads.
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Not much undergrowth in this area. I thought that these trees were on the small size. There is a stand in the UP, near Copper Harbor, called Estivant Pines, with far larger trees. No matter, these were still wonderful. | |
The Mertz Trail had more undergrowth. | |
The Mertz Trail crossed the road and we found convincing evidence that bigfoot does exist. | |
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Next, it was up to Gaylord to ride the North Central Bike Trail. Oops, but first there was a taco truck on Gaylord’s outskirts. We picked up a veggie quesadilla that was surprisingly like yesterday’s panini. It wasn’t as authentic as a Mexican family-run taco truck, but this was, after all, Gaylord, and it was yummy nonetheless.
While eating our quesadilla, we noticed the clouds moving in. It wasn’t going to hit the promised 90º. In fact, it was still pretty windy and when the sun hid behind a cloud, the air was chilly. We started to waver on the biking idea - wimps!
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There were three food trucks lined up. One was Mexican, one was Asian, and one specialized in hot dogs. | |
Wanda explaining with her hands that we want the big one. | |
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No, we were stickin’ to the plan, no matter wind, rain, or shine. The paved trail ran for 61 miles to the Straits of Mackinac. We weren’t going nearly that far, but we chose a section that reportedly had two tunnels according to a trail map at the Gaylord trailhead.
The trail was a nice mix of open prairie and dense tree-tunnel forest. It was straight, level, and nicely paved. We did encounter one pesky problem. Yesterday’s gale winds blew down many trees over the trail. This slowed us way down and limited how far up the trail we were able to travel. Most trees were small enough that we could lift the bikes over, but there were a lot of them.
The tunnels cracked me up. They were culverts passing under a road. We were expecting 1/2 mile RR tunnels like on the Sparta-Elroy Bike Trail in Wisconsin. I don’t think I would call a culvert a tunnel - what do I know?
We stopped off at Vanderbilt, the next town up the trail. We got there just in time to witness a teenage girl beating up a teenage boy. I couldn’t tell how serious the fight was, but she was one tough hombre (or hombress?). After the short one-round fight we stopped in at the local KwickMart and bought a Mike’s Hard Lemonade to split. I know, drinkin’ and drivin’ and all. It was a small can, not the big 24-ouncer, and we did split it.
When we asked a group of bikers coming from the north about the fallen trees on the section they just completed, they reported that it was bad. We decided to turn around at Vanderbilt. We knew that we had to fight the trees all the way back to Gaylord. Why add even more trees? Our bike mileage for the day was under 20 miles - wimps!
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A map of all the bike trails in the northern LP. The solid lines are paved trails. | |
The logo for the North Central State Trail is pretty cool. | |
The first mile of trail followed the rails. I don't think these rails were operational. | |
It was slow going with all the trees over the trail from yesterday's winds. They weren't large trees, but we had to lift the bikes over most of them. | |
One of the two tunnels listed on the trail map. That cracked me up. | |
Back at the Gaylord trailhead, I noticed this photo. It looks like Gaylord had a homegrown car Company from 1911 to 1913. The caption on the bottom states that this car just completed a 650-mile test run from Detroit to Gaylord. Apparently, the Gaylord 30 car made it. | |
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There are several large striking lakes in this Northcentral LP interior area including Otsego Lake, Higgins Lake, Houghton Lake, Lake St. Helen, and Lake Margrethe, plus many smaller lakes. After the logging debacle, and with a few years of regrowth under its belt, the cut-over majestic forest at least greened up enough to cover the logging scars. Tourism quickly developed. Fishing, hunting, skiing, canoeing, and boating became big attractions. In fact, the former Grayling Winter Sports Park, as I learned from Rod Sterling’s Twilight Zone museum yesterday, operated from 1929 to 1973. It was the first ski park in Michigan and one of the first in the nation. Snow trains from down-state brought hoards of tourists to ski and toboggan.
Higgins Lake and Houghton Lake are the two largest gems near Grayling. Higgins Lake hosts two State Parks. After packing up the bikes, we drove down to North Higgins Lake State Park to snoop around. The campground was cramped but not as much as Otsego Lake State Park. Again, we smugly grinned at our good fortune to have snagged the roomy campsite #49 at Hartwick Pines. We have grown fond of that campground.
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Finally, we had an active day, and it was glorious. (Note: Damn typos! I re-read the last couple of days and found a few mistakes. The most egregious mistake was saying that we moved from the eastern side of Michigan to the interior. I meant to say the western, Lake Michigan side. We are going to tour the eastern, Lake Huron side next. I write these journals every night from around 11 to midnight, while my brain is trying to shut down.) | |
Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum. | | | | |
