Some well-kept Trail - a hero who keeps it so, and the frightful road walk to get there

"Carry on Bravely" is Mick Hawkins' signature valediction..  Mick is a trail maintainer and active member of the Chief Noonday local chapter of the North Country Trail Association.  Dedicated trail-loving volunteers like this are the Heart and Sole of every good Trail.

Situated halfway between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, Michigan, Yankee Springs State Recreation Area is a popular destination for outdoor activities, including hiking.  It's trail through very pretty mature woods.  Here's Hat number 14 with proof.

This is the spiritual core of the Chief Noonday Chapter of the North Country Trail Association, one of 40 local chapters and affiliates that are the National organization's 'boots on the ground' when it comes to making the trail work.

Whenever I run into a maintainer on the trail, I go out of my way to thank them for their work, and that was the case when I met Mick Hawkins in Yankee Springs doing a trail reroute around a sensitive habitat area for a newly Federally Listed threatened rattlesnake, the Eastern Massasauga.

We had a nice chat there, and then met again a couple hours later as I was finishing up a trail leg and Mick arrived to replenish brochures in the Kiosk.

Mick is low-key, but he's a mover when it comes to his local club.  And his local club's section of the trail stands out among the others as being better maintained.  Best of all, they have blazed their road walks.  Here's Hat number thirteen with an unusual trail marker, placed by a local enthusiast who actually lives on the route.

Of the North Country Trail sections I've hiked from central New York to here in SW Michigan, only one other local chapter has stood out as head-and-shoulders above the rest.  That's the Wampum chapter in far western PA.

The North Country Trail through Yankee Springs Rec Area features a close encounter with Hall Lake with its two significant islands and water lilies in bloom.

And just north of there it features a significant climb to Graves Hill overlook.  It was about 125 feet according to my GPS.  The actual overlook is on a side trail, and it's overgrown so that it no longer has a view, but just the climb was something significant for me after 400 miles of flat hiking.

These hills are made up of glacier-deposited piles of sand and gravel.  And unfortunately where there is a resource like that just sitting there ready for the taking, there are people ready to exploit it.  On my road walk approaching Yankee Springs from the south, I was regularly blown off the road by the monster tandem gravel trucks.

The roads here have little or no shoulders.  There's no place to hide.  Can't blame the local chapter for this, unless it's for not finding off-road trail options--a nearly impossible task through privately held land.

So I just clenched my jaw and 'Carried on Bravely.'

Here's the GPS Tracks of the approach road walking and a topo map with the route through Yankee springs showing the many various gravel and sand hills, many with geometrical shapes from having been dug up and hauled away.

If you want more detail of the route, zoom in on one of the maps below - the segment through Yankee Springs, and my overall Personal Continuous Footpath track.

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Walkin' in the Woods again - and back on the NCT

North Country Trail (NCT) spans Augusta Creek on this elaborate footbridge.

The big Michigan cities of Battle Creek and Kalamazoo are closing in on one another.  A couple more decades and they'll squeeze together into one big megalopolis.  But for now there's still some country between them, and still some laid-back small town flavor too.  The comfortable little town of Augusta splits the distance between its big neighbors east and west.  And the North Country Trail uses Augusta to launch the hiker on his/her northward quest into the heart of the state.

I like little towns - towns that aren't growing and sprouting suburbs, towns that feature a block or two of businesses, where you can see one end from the other.  In the case of Augusta the trail passes just three blocks east of downtown and that's enough to keep you in a residential neighborhood for barely four blocks.  Heading north from town there is rural trail that skips what there is of a downtown, following the edge of a cornfield instead.

And just south of town is the Fort Custer State Recreation Area (FCSRA) with many, many miles of well groomed and well-marked trail, none of which the North Country Trail uses.

I chose the River trail, used mostly by horses.  It follows the east bank of the Kalamazoo River, connecting to roads at a gate on the far SW corner of the Recreation Area and emerging in the north at the Recreation Area's main entrance where my footsteps finally actually joined the North Country Trail.

I had planned my connecting road walk from Defiance, Ohio to reach the NCT here.  The climax of the road walk took me through another great little town named ... wait for it ... Climax.  Here I had a chance to let Hat number Eleven pose with their American Legion Post's memorial tank.

It was a long haul from Defiance, so it felt *so* good to be off roads and back on real trail.

The River Trail provides a nice view of the big lazy Kalamazoo river.

The trails in FCSRA are well groomed and meticulously marked with 'you are here' maps and directions to the next marker post.

It passed all too quickly, and I was in Augusta.  At the Augusta Road trailhead I finished the four block road walk and let Hat number twelve pose on the trail register box.

Then came the walk beside the cornfield and on into the Kellogg Biological Station with the covered bridge (photo up top), and I was back following the blue blazes.

That particular blue blaze had a matching companion - a dragonfly every bit as blue as the blaze.  It's called a Spatterdock Darner - Rhionaeschna mutata - and it's quite rare across most of its range.  I don't think I've ever seen one before.

Through the vast Michigan State U Kellogg Biological Station's holdings, the trail provides wonderful variety.  There was perfectly groomed footpath in the woods,

a walk beside Duck Lake,

and open trail through fields

including this oddly placed bench with a view of cows in a pasture.

It's good to be back in the good graces of the NCT, doing some more of their 'certified' trail.  I actually dislike that designation, because as a result, NCT seems much less committed to trail continuity.  Many of their road walks are not blazed at all.  The impression is that there's no real route connecting the certified segments.  That's one of the reasons that I feel free to choose my own route.

So here's the map of the day where my personal choice re-connected with certified NCT at Augusta.

And here's the hike of my own choice through Climax and into the Fort Custer Rec Area that I did the previous day.  It is a wide view that shows how I targeted the gap between Battle Creek and Kalamazoo

More certified trail to come!  Stay tuned.

SW Michigan Lake country - Bearing up through the Trail Drought

Hat number eight at Lake George.  It's a long slog, all on roads, but scenes like this help me bear it.

I'm hiking my own hike to bridge a big gap in the North Country Trail.  I sorely miss footpath in the woods.  If I had chosen to follow the suggested trail route, the wait would have been longer, I think, and taking my way I got to pass through a corner of Indiana.

But now I'm in Michigan, and as soon as I reached the state line, Lake George was there to greet me.  It's a medium-small lake with classy, well maintained homes and cottages packing every available inch of the shore line except for the public access boat launch where I took the headline photo.

Close behind Lake George was Matteson Lake, where I perched Hat number nine.

But most of my time has been spent prairie walking.

Yes, they call this prairie.  Michigan does not come to mind when I think of prairie.  But it's undeniable.  And to help convince me there are road names like Snow Prairie and Prairie Lake, and towns with names like ... well ... Prairieville.

The prairies are known for more than wide open spaces.  It's tornado country.  Fortunately it's not tornado season any more, but I did have to take shelter from a nasty thunderstorm.

You don't want to be caught walking these fields in a thunderstorm when you're the tallest thing around.

Back in Fremont, Indiana, just south of the Michigan line, at their nice new library where I met a kid willing to pose with Hat number seven,

they have a prairie garden

which proves that natural prairie is far more than just grass.  Here's hat number ten with some butterfly milkweed.

Unfortunately, so far, I've seen no monarch butterflies, which are practically symbiotic with milkweed.  I may be between generations here.  I'll certainly keep looking.

Here are the screen shots of the GPS tracks of the days I wore hats 7 through 10.

And for more detail, you can zoom in to SW Michigan on my Personal Continuous Footpath overview map from Wikiloc:

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Two new States in a single step

Hat number six atop the Tri-State Monument, which is actually a little off to one side in Hillsdale County, Michigan

Road walking.  Flat farm country.  Straight roads, running either east-west or north-south, laid out in an endless grid of perfect one-mile squares.  Nothing much to see.

That's been my fare in northwest Ohio.  That will be the fare when I enter southern Michigan.

What I've done to make it more interesting is strike out on my own--design my own road walk, rather than follow that prescribed by the North Country Trail Association.  From Defiance Ohio they chose a route that meanders east toward Toledo then back west and north to Hillsdale, Michigan then west through Battle Creek.  I chose a route that made a bee-line northwest.  My goal: to add the state of Indiana to the collection of states along my continuous footpath.

It's one of those opportunities that don't exist in many places around the country--a point where three states meet that is accessible to the public and is celebrated by a monument.  The monument, in this case, is not right at the tri-state point, because that point is in the middle of a road.

Monument box in the middle of the road.  This covers and protects the actual survey marker ...

But that gave me the chance to -- theoretically -- step out of Ohio and into Indiana and Michigan with a single definitive pounce!  These are the 20th and 21st states I've connected with my continuous string of footprints (22nd national political division counting the District of Columbia).

Getting there was, as they say, half the fun.  The other half I made myself, by putting my succession of daily hats into photos.

Hat number two with soybean field (Hat number one was featured in the last post, the one about Wetzelland)

Volunteer wearing Hat number three

Hat number four at the Williams Center community cemetery

Hat number five at the approach to Edon, a small town with a big list of celebrated residents.

Since leaving the official designated route of the Trail, as reported in my last post, I crossed the Maumee (Miami) River ...

... and have been treated to flat, open-country scenes like this

and oddities like this, the biggest 'TP-ing' I've ever seen (a prank? a party gone out of control? or is this just the way they celebrate having a grove trees - this is a young plantation of walnut trees)

with the ubiquitous European fulvous daylily in full bloom (yes, it's considered an invasive species)

and a few glacier carved depressions beginning to appear as I approach the Great Lakes and Michigan's lake country.

Midwestern summer weather has been pleasant with a few hot days but many more cool ones, and the occasional thunderstorm.

Other than that, not much to report.  Flat.  Flat.  With more flat to come.  And more hats to come.  Can I stand the excitement?

Meanwhile, here are the GPS Tracks of the five days of trekking across northwest Ohio presented in chronological order, thus southeast toward northwest.  It was the middle of that last map - the last day's hiking that is part of this report - when I set foot into Michigan and then headed on west into Indiana.  I would be back in Michigan and into lake country in another day.  Stay tuned.