Today was pretty busy, but it was all good. In the afternoon, I stopped at the "Old Grade Campground" (Manistee National Forest). It's only the second time I've been there.
Can you guess how it got its name?
Yup! It was a railroad grade. But you know I can't be content with only knowing that. I had to know what railroad. This is not far north of the village of Peacock where two separate railroads crossed each other. However, it is on the north side of the Little Manistee River. So I couldn't quite figure what railroad this was.
Turns out, it's a logging line of the Manistee and Luther RR. Their main line went from Eastlake to Hoxeyville (never quite making it to either Manistee or Luther!). On the map, the red lines are Manistee and Luther. The topmost of the dark green arrows points to where I was today. And that means the railroad had a bridge across the river there. I wonder if one can find any remnants.
The lower dark green arrow points to Peacock where the light green Michigan E & W line crossed the Chicago and West Michigan line in magenta.
I was hoping to write about the loop trail at Old Grade for one of my columns. I have to think about whether I should do that. Some of the trail is in bad shape. I made it through with electronic help. The good portion could be done as an out and back. Anyway, I had fun. Here's where the trail begins.
When you get around on the other side of the loop, the trail briefly follows a small, unnamed creek that flows beneath hemlocks to the Little Manistee River .
Here are a couple of closeups. Red maple leaf- not just red in color, but it's a red maple.
And some needles from a white cedar which fell artistically on its horizontal trunk. I suspect squirrels bit these off and dropped them.
This all happened after I met with some people about some trail stuff, and I also did laundry. I worked on computer stuff a bit this morning, and my day was completely filled!
Miles hiked in 2025: 410.4
Old Grade loop trail and in and out from entrance 2.3 miles.
 | See Not Quite, But Quite All Right |
It should be so great to be on board a train, passing through such a beautiful scene to Wonderland.
ReplyDeleteI know! I love imagining all those old railroads, although this one was probably poorly constructed and was only for hauling logs. Then they were ripped out. The fact that it had a bridge is interesting though
DeleteAn old RR grade sure makes for a nice trail. You had a busy day
ReplyDeleteAnn- I did. But I have to try to follow this grade to the river. It was a long straight stretch of rail
Delete