North Country Trail- White Cloud Segment (6/20/10)
Had a big day planned and it turned out okay, but not great. The intention was to fish the Muskegon River east of Newaygo, then do some hiking in the southern end of the Manistee National Forest. The fishing on the river was a bust, mostly because the spot where I thought I have good access, off Thornapple Road, is a State Boating Access site. The first annoyance there was that my State Parks sticker doesn’t count at a Boating Access Site, so I had to pay the DNR another $24 for another sticker, even though I wasn’t boating. The second annoyance was that this spot is a popular staging area for folks to float down the river on tubes and rafts and things like this. They have a lot of fun, which I can appreciate, but in sections like this there are a lot of them and they remove any sense of remoteness from time spent of the river. There were no hiking trails here, just a poison ivy laden path 300 yards down the river. I fished for about 30 minutes and left in a funk.
Headed up past Newaygo into the national forest and parked at an unmarked lot 50 yards into the woods off 40th street. This is a North Country Trail head. I hiked south for about twenty minutes with traffic never out of earshot. Crossed state highway M37, some railroad tracks and a bunch of dirt roads, at which point the trail ended (this point is marked as a “temporary connector”on the map). Turned around and walked back to the car, then kept going north for another 20 minutes to a parking area at M37. Walked back to the car and left. If I ever decide to section hike the NCT, I will really appreciate having already completed this part.
Drove back down through Newaygo, which seems like a very nice place. If I had this to do over again, I bring Anna, hike some spots further into the forest, and get lunch in Newaygo. As it was, I just cut east and headed for home. Made a brief stop at at Marl Lake on M46 near Edmore. Lots of small bluegill in there, caught one. Saw a guy with a stringer of five/six fat bluegill and a nice looking kit-built kayak from Chesapeake Light Craft. Helped him load the kayak into his Econoline and then drove home.
This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 8:59 pm and is filed under fishing, hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.