Michigan Outdoors - Three Hidden Places

Michigan outdoors can mean relaxing on a sandy beach or getting lost in the wilderness. In fact, one of the hidden places described below will let you do both. Here are three places you won't find in the magazine articles and guide books.

Michigan Outdoors - Beaches

You may have been to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore (and the dunes), and the other sandy spots along the east side of Lake Michigan. I highly recommend them, but what if you want a beach to yourself? Head north, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Specifically, follow Highway 2 west (if you are coming from the Mackinac Bridge), and a couple miles before Rapid River, turn south on County road 513. Follow this until it splits. Take the road to Wilsey Bay. Where you first come to the water, it is a public access point, but this is just the place to leave your car if you want solitude (it is sandy here if you want to take a swim). Walk a mile to the end of the road, and then on the rocky beach past the last house.

Now you are in Hiawatha National Forest for the next seven miles of beach. The last time I camped there, I never saw a person in two days. I followed fresh black bear tracks along the beach and explored the remains of an old cabin. There are no roads to get there, and ATV's are not permitted. Want forested wilderness? Just walk away from the beach - and watch for wild blueberries in the forest clearings if it is August or September.

Michigan Outdoors - Rivers

The Manistee River can be floated from Baxter Bridge (the next crossing down from Hwy 131) north of Cadillac, for most of a day without seeing a house or a road. Most of the route is in the Manistee National Forest, where you can camp without permits. This isn't a river full of rapids, though (at least not on this stretch). This is a river for relaxing.

We used to park at the bridge where Road 17 crosses, and hike upstream with a small day pack loaded with snacks, water, a saw, hatchet, and rope. By early afternoon we would have a raft built of dead trees cut to length, and we spent the following hours floating back to the car. Tom Sawyer Day, we called it, and on six of these trips I have never passed another canoe or boat on the river.

Michigan Outdoors - Really Hidden

Get out your topographical map for this one. North of Ishpeming, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, there is some wild and rough country. As you drive north out of Ishpeming, you'll wind through rocky lakes and woods. Somewhere an hour north, on a sandy road, you'll come to a river with two-hundred foot high cliffs on the other side. I promised not to get more specific than this, so you'll have to work a bit to find it.

Go until the road gets too rough or the puddles too deep, and park. Find a log to cross the small river on, and head uphill. Up beyond and on top of those cliffs and hills are a couple little lakes, just a thirty minute walk away, surrounded by a rocky wilderness, and with no trail going to them. It took my brother 10 seconds to get a trout on the line the first time I took him there. Good luck!

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