Manistee River Trail Loop - Afterthoughts

We learned a lot on this trip, mostly about ourselves.  The hike on day two was about 3 miles longer than we were ready for, 10 miles is our comfortable daily limit.

Our gear performed flawlessly.  The hours spent researching gear, reading reviews, and comparing details, really paid off.  It took us a few miles to get our packs adjusted right, but once we had them dialed in they fit great.

Chrissy's work on the menu really made a good trip great, especially the grapefruits!  She has vowed never to carry 2 pounds worth of fruit on a trip again, but I will see if I can sneak one in when we head to N Manitou Island.

We really liked the North Country trail side of the river.  The trail was well marked, the hills weren't that steep, and it was an easy hike.  We didn't like the Manistee River side as well.  There were many more roots to have to negotiate around, the trail was muddy in spots, and there were a lot more hills.  This may have been due to over exerting ourselves on day 2 and not really enjoying day 3 as much.

We can't wait until our next trip, and have already started planning it.

Manistee River Trail Loop - Day 3

Sunday morning was cold.  We woke up a little earlier on Sunday than we did on Saturday.  I boiled water for coffee and oatmeal, we packed up camp, and headed south down the trail.  There was a large family camped at the coveted campsite four.  As we crossed through the camp site I wasn't sure what the allure was, perhaps that it's on a bluff overlooking the river is what gives it its appeal.  Immediately south of the campsite is a small flowing stream that leads to a waterfall.  The water is crystal clear and sounded like a much bigger water fall.

 We crossed the bridge over the stream and walked next to camp site number three.  In my opinion this is a much nicer site. 

As we walked along the trail we noticed that this trail was a bit more technical than the North Country Trail side. However the views from this side were spectacular, not only of the river, but of the areas reclaimed by nature.  Where the NCT side of the river was a typical hardwoods trail, the MRT side was much more diverse.

We made good time on the trail, putting some distance between us and last night's camp site in a relatively short amount of time.  We stopped for a snack on a ridge overlooking the river.  I had my second grapefruit of the trip.

After our break we had several uneventful miles.  I remember passing by a mile marker that said "5 MILES" and thought it was odd because I didn't remember seeing any other mile markers and it made me wonder what we were 5 miles from.  As we made it to the aptly named log bridge I noticed something floating in the water.  I walked to the left of the bridge and saw a mother duck and several ducklings behind her trying to swim against the current.  Aparently my appearance on the shore was enough of a distraction to make them forget about swimming for a second and head down stream.  One of the ducklings got stuck behind a log but swam to the side and got carried by the current to the rest of his family.  It was cool to see them swimming together.

 I'm not sure if it's because it was early in the season, or if the trail has been neglected, but we had crossed several places along the trail where the ground had eroded away leaving gaping holes in both the trail and campsites.  This left a few unsafe locations along the trail, but they were easily spotted and avoided.

In preparing for the trip I head read where there was a short section of trail that went through a swampy area and was known for getting hiker's feet wet.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that somebody had placed wood planks as a foot path through this section, and we made it through unscathed.

The remainder of our journey was uneventful.  We passed a father with his new born child in a carrier on his chest headed north.  It appeared that they were only out for a short hike, but I thought it was cool that he was introducing his child to the woods at such an early age.

We made our way up the final ascent of the trail prior to reaching Coates Highway.  I had forgotten that we had to hike almost a mile along the road to get back to our parking area.  I left Chrissy near the trail head, took off my pack, and hiked the last section solo.  I made it to the truck, rolled down the windows, turned my phone back on, and returned to pick her up.  It was nice to not know what time it was for a couple days, I didn't miss my phone either.

We headed east toward Manistee and stopped at Big Al's Pizza in Manistee.  We had been told that they had great subs, and we weren't lied to.  We both ordered a sub and the largest Coke they had.  It was delicious!  We talked about the trip for a few miles as we headed south toward home and made plans for the next one...

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Manistee River Trail Loop - Day 2

The morning came earlier than I anticipated. Chrissy was up and taking pictures of the sunrise even before I poked my head out of my bag.  I've read numerous trip reports where people get up early and are on the trail by 8am, this has always impressed me because I can never seem to drag myself out of the tent early in the morning.

Chrissy made granola bars based on a recipe she found at the Trail Cooking website.  We had the granola bars and coffee for breakfast.  Chrissy also surprised me with a grapefruit.  I'm convinced there's nothing better than a grapefruit on the trail... except a Snickers Almond maybe.

NCT Blue Blaze

We broke camp and headed north on the trail.  The trail is well marked and relatively clean.  We hiked for a few miles and enjoyed the scenery, stopping every hour or so to take a break and adjust our packs. We made good progress for most of the morning.

We hiked past a campsite on a point on the east side of the trail that we wanted to come back to on another trip.

Before our trip I had read that bears had been seen in the area.  I kept my eyes open in the hopes of seeing a bear, or at the very least some sign of bears in the area.  We didn't see any bears but we did see some scratches on a log that crossed a valley near the trail.  Aside from the scratches we didn't really see too much wildlife.  Squirrels, birds, lots of frogs, but nothing bigger.



Bear Scratches on a Log

 

There wasn't much traffic along the trail.  We passed a couple guys who were hiking together a few times throughout the day, we met a couple out for a day hike, and the Boy Scout troop headed back to Red Bridge to meet the rest of their team passed us headed south.  A few of them looked beat, but their leaders were friendly and gave a nice trail report to us.  

We continued on our way until we got to forest road 8060.  We stopped here for a lunch of tuna wraps and coffee.  After a short break we hoisted our packs back up to our shoulders and continued north up the second longest hill on the loop.  

The next several miles were mostly uneventful.  Walk a while, stop and adjust some piece of gear, hydrate, continue north.  Some maps indicate that there is a water source near Sheep Ranch Road, however trail reports reviewed prior to our expedition said that the first water source is Eddington Creek.  As we crossed through the area where the first water source was supposed to be, there was no obvious source of water, so this confirmed the info we received.  As you cross through this area it's a potentially easy place to lose the trail especially where the forest road crosses the trial, the trail follows the ridge line north-northeast.  Just follow the blazes and you should be good to go.

We arrived at Eddington Creek with plenty of water in reserve.  We filtered water and stopped for a short snack of jerky and chocolate.  There was another couple stopped at the creek with similar plans as well as the guys we kept trading the lead with. 

The trail north of Eddington Creek is a little different than the previous 7 miles.  Everything south was well marked trails with minimal interaction with roads, north of Eddinton we begin to hike closer to roads, through day use areas, down a road and through a parking area.  The trail changes a little bit too.  As you cross over from the hardwood forests of the south into the coniferous woods north the trail isn't as well marked and you need to watch for signs identifying the trail. 

I'm not sure if it was the monotony of the trail, or my adventurous personality, but we managed to lose the trail and end up on the shore of the Manistee River.  Somewhere in one of the day use sites I proceeded to where I assumed the trail resumed but failed to not if there were blazes marking the way.  The trail led us to the river.  This was as good a place as any to take a break, so we took our shoes off and waded in the cold flowing water.  It was so cold in fact that the crayfish on the bottom of the river wouldn't move as you walked by them, I had never seen this before.  A few fishermen floated by on kayaks but it looked like they were having better luck emptying beer cans than catching fish. 

Our trek resumed with some bushwhacking to try to find the trail again.  I figured if we kept the river to our right and kept going north we would eventually find the trail again.  About a half mile through the swamp we met up with the trail and resumed our trek.

You can see the Little Mac from the foot path about a mile from the bridge as well as the last 100 yards or so before the bridge.  The bridge is more impressive in person than it is in pictures, although not by it's size but by it's beauty in the surroundings.  We stopped to take a few pictures before crossing over and starting our southbound trek. 

Our intent was to cross the bridge and make it to campsite 4 to make camp for the night.  However, as we crossed the bridge Chrissy said that she was getting sore.  She's not known for complaining so I knew this meant she was more uncomfortable than she let on.  I began lookin for a place to make camp for the night.  This proved harder than I anticipated.  I always like to find a campsite that had a nice view, or is something more than a flat patch in the middle of the woods.  This combined with restrictions on distances from trail or water limited our choices.  We found a spot one hill climb shy of campsite 4, and as luck would have it there was already a family camped there, so our plans would have to be altered either way.

Our campsite was great, although I may have mis-measured the distance from the river by a foot or two.  After camp was set up we filtered water and made dinner.  I don't carry a watch on backpacking trips, so I'm not sure what time it was when we laid down in the tent to read, but the sun was still up and it made the tent nice and warm.  We kept the rain fly off as we fell asleep reading.  We woke up when the chill of night hit us, opened our sleeping bags, crawled in and got some sleep.  A midnight jaunt from the tent to respond to the call of nature revealed a beautiful starry sky, a mist was floating up off the river, an owl was hooting somewhere in the distance, and coyotes could be heard playing across the river.  This was as close to perfect as I could imagine. We crawled back into the tent and slept until sunrise. 

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Manistee River Trail Loop - Day 1

I had to work on the first day of our trip so we didn't get to leave town until after 6:00pm.  We had all our gear packed in advance and stowed in the back of my truck.  All I needed was to survive 12 hours at work, drive home, and point the truck north.

I had punched the coordinates to Red Bridge River access into the GPS and parked the truck there.  After getting our packs on we were greeted by a couple of Boy Scout Troop leaders from Fruitport, MI.  We chatted for a while.  Their maps were much better than ours and they offered us one to take with us, I am not used to hand outs so this little bit of trail magic was awkward for me at first but paid off big dividends along the trail.  One of them informed us that we weren't supposed to park here but had to use a lot about a half mile east of there.  The Manistee River Trailhead isn't near the Red Bridge access parking lot, parking is on the North Country Trail side.  Before we left we posed for a picture, then stowed our bags and moved our truck to the trail head.

Once we finally had the truck parked in the right place we donned our packs, did a quick gear check, and headed the wrong way down the trail. After we hiked a few hundred yards down the trail my internal compass turned us around the correct way and we headed the correct way down the trail.  The first half mile or so is relatively flat until you reach the first hill of the trail.  I would wager this is the longest climb on the entire loop. 

Daylight was quickly fading so we found a suitable site to set up a tent along the trail and made camp for the night.  Darkness quickly settled in around us and the critters of the night came out to play.  The real adventure begins tomorrow.

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