In Michigan, you’re never far from the water or the woods. This fall, you can take a “color tour” in your car, watching the flow and the flora from a bridge or a county road.
Or you can lower yourself to the level of nature, by riding a bike, paddling a canoe or walking in the dirt. If, says a Michigan bicyclist, you choose to experience nature uncut and unfiltered, you’ll “see so much more than when you’re flying by.”
The canoe is the oldest form of transportation in Michigan, a state veined with rivers and embraced by lakes. The Indians traveled in birch bark canoes, which were later copied by the French voyageurs who arrived in the 17th Century. Three Rivers Kayak & Canoe (1509 S. Main St., Three Rivers; 616-273-9000) rents wood-strip “voyaging” canoes, just like the Potawatomi used to paddle. Ride in one of the canoes, which seats 6 to 14 people, and “you’ll learn that the Indians used these waterways when they had no road,” says owner Charles Swihart. “You’ll learn what it was like before the white man.”
Three Rivers is at the meeting of the Rocky, the Portage and the St. Joseph in the southwestern part of the state. The surrounding county has six rivers and three creeks, giving it more miles of navigable stream than any other in the United States, according to Swihart.
Swihart’s livery offers half-day trips for $25 per canoe, and that includes shuttle service. If you really want to live like a voyageur, he’ll outfit you with camping equipment and drop you in the water at Union City for a 200-mile trip down the St. Joe, all the way to Lake Michigan.
To the west of Three Rivers is the placid Dowagiac River. Doe-Wah-Jack’s Canoe Rental (Michigan Highway 51 North, Dowagiac; 888-782-7410) sits on its east bank.
“To me, it has some current, but it’s kind of a slow-paced river,” says owner Randy Rea. “I just like to get out there and float, and listen to the river. If you’re quiet, you can see a lot of wildlife.”
Last fall, a Chicago couple who spent a day on the Dowagiac cataloged two great horned owls, a blue heron, two kingfishers, a raccoon, three fox squirrels, seven wood ducks, a vulture, three hawks and more than 30 sandhill cranes. When they stopped for lunch, three horses showed up at their picnic site.
Doe-Wah-Jack’s has 2-hour, 4-hour, and 6-hour trips. It’s all rural, with tree branches interlaced over the narrow channel. Rea has 22 kayaks, and he’s trying to get all of his customers to switch from canoes.
“You can make better time on a kayak,” he says. “They’re a lot more maneuverable, and a lot more comfortable. I describe it as a floating lounge chair. Once people get into a kayak, they rarely go back to a canoe.”
There are enough options for a full weekend at the Indian Valley Campground & Canoe Livery (8200 108th St. S.E., Middleville; 616-891-8579) on the Thornapple River, southeast of Grand Rapids. The livery offers 9-mile and 17-mile runs, which owner Bill Mulder describes as “just kind of a scenic trip through the woods, with a lot of fall colors.”
You can spend a full weekend at Indian Valley, which has hookups for recreational vehicles, as well as “primitive” campsites, which include nothing but a picnic table, a fire ring and a patch of grass. The campground also has a volleyball court, a swimming pond, an indoor heated pool and a bait shop.
The glaciers that shaped Michigan gave it shallow river valleys and low rolling hills. Eons later, bicyclists are grateful.
On Sept. 27, the population of Three Oaks will quadruple, as cyclists gather for the Apple Cider Century, a ride through the orchards of Berrien County, about 90 miles from Chicago in southwest Michigan.
The loops, which vary from 25 miles to the maximum test of 100, “will go along the shores of Lake Michigan, and they’ll go into the orchard and vineyard country,” says Brian Volstorf of the Three Oaks Spokes, the club that sponsors the Century.
“It’s the fall season, so you’ll smell the ripened fruit,” says Volstorf.
The ride begins and ends at Three Oaks High School, where cyclists can gorge on spaghetti, ice cream, apple pie, fresh apples and 2,000 gallons of cider.
The Three Oaks Spokes operate out of the Bicycle Museum (One Oak St.; 616-756-3361). Housed in an old railroad depot, the museum owns a collection of antique bicycles, plus the bike Greg LeMond rode to victory in the 1989 Tour de France.
The museum rents one-speed bicycles and has maps of the Outback Trails, marked routes that follow dirt and gravel roads through the local countryside.
Michigan Bicycle Touring (3512 Red School Rd., Kingsley; 231-263-5885), which takes small groups of riders on weekend-long bicycle tours, still has some trips left this year.
The Saugatuck Amble, which runs from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1, includes plenty of riding along Lake Michigan, plus an overnight stay at the Wickwood Inn, in the tour’s namesake village.
“It starts both days in Saugatuck, and one day loops to the south and one day loops to the north,” says Eve Wolters of Michigan Bicycle Touring. “There’s some nice lakefront riding, a lot of countryside riding. There will be some hiking on the dunes, and we will stop at the winery.”
Each day’s loops vary in distance, and riders are given maps so they can keep their own pace. The tour is limited to 24 riders, and the fee is $445, which includes meals and lodging. If you miss September’s ride, there’s another Saugatuck ride from Oct. 13-15.
A more modest tour, as befits its name, is the Amish Amble, which covers the flatland around Mendon, south of Kalamazoo. The riders “pass a lot of small towns. Colon, the magic capital–there is a magic shop they can visit,” Wolters says. “In Centerville, you go through a covered bridge. You do pass Amish farms.”
The tour, which costs $309 and includes lodging and meals, takes place Sept. 22-24 or Oct. 20-22. On the Saturday evening of each trip, the ravenous cyclists eat a traditional Shaker dinner in an Amish home. “It’s a very large, hearty dinner,” according to Wolters.
Starting in the late ’80s, Michigan began converting its old railbeds to hiking and biking trails. The first of these “rail to trails” was the Kal-Haven, which runs between Kalamazoo and South Haven. The 34 miles of crushed limestone are excellent for mountain bikes or cross bikes, said Kurt Maxwell of Van Buren State Park (23960 Ruggles Rd., South Haven; 616-637-2788), which runs the trail.
“It’s 60 or 70 percent shaded, so in the fall it’s just beautiful,” Maxwell says. “It feels like you’re riding through a colored tunnel.”
The trail passes through a covered bridge in South Haven, a railroad museum in Bloomingdale, plus the towns of Gobles, Grand Junction and Lacota.
“Being a 34-mile-long trail, if you haven’t been riding, it’s quite a trek,” Maxwell says. “What we advise people to do is go halfway and turn around. We do allow overnight parking if people if people want to go to Kalamazoo and stay in one of the hotels…[but] it’s definitely a leisurely type of trail. Ninety percent of our folks are families who are out for a nice ride.”
The East Coast has the Appalachian Trail. The West Coast has the Pacific Crest Trail. The Upper Midwest has its epic walk, too: the North County Trail, which, if it’s ever completed, will be 4,600 miles long. Right now, the trail follows an intermittent course from New York to North Dakota. One of the few finished sections is a 20-mile walk from Battle Creek to Yankee Springs. It runs through the Kellogg Forest, through the Kellogg Biological Station, which is home to swans, both mute and trumpeter, and finally to the Yankee Springs Recreation Area, where you can view the Devil’s Soupbowl, a giant depression created by glaciers. All along the way, the trail is marked with rectangular-shaped blue “blazes” painted on tree trunks.
“You’re going to walk through just a gorgeous section of native hardwoods, stands of pines, little streams, even some moraines left by the Ice Age,” says David Cornell, vice president of the North Country Trail Association (49 Monroe Center, Grand Rapids; 616-454-5506).
An even more scenic walk is in Saugatuck Dunes State Park (2215 Ottawa Beach Rd., Holland; 616-637-7422), on the grounds of an old prison and seminary run by Augustinian friars. The sandy 5 1/2-mile trail weaves through stands of spruce, beeches and hemlocks, before reaching the top of a pine-crowned dune. On the way down, you’ll catch sight of Lake Michigan, and walk through dune grass and pussy willows. The dunes are steep, and it’s often a struggle to grind through the sand, but you’ll be rewarded with the sight of an orange sun wavering over blue water. In Michigan, that always means you’ve found the end of the road.
