Spending four days hiking with a bunch of people you’ve never met before is something that not everyone understands. Heck, I’m not sure I understand it, but it is how I have made some of my best friends, so I guess I’ll continue to do so. Hoping to complete a bunch of North Country Trail from the Ohio border north, which is about four hours from where I live, I knew this trip would require a place to stay, and people to help with car staging.
I began to suss out possible lodgings in the area: campgrounds, Airbnbs, and the like. I was looking for someplace centrally located between Homer and the Ohio border, allowing for a 50+ mile hike with someplace dry to sleep if the fall weather turned out to be less than idyllic. I eventually found the Somerset Campground, which had rustic cabins, and a bath house with showers. My next goal was to find some people to hike with.
While I have a lot of hiking buddies, not everyone loves to do road walk, and that’s what this stretch of NCT is, mostly. I posted on several Michigan hiking pages on Facebook, looking for women who were interested in completing this section. One person who expressed interest was someone I knew from chapter group hikes, but everyone else was new to me. I sent out a survey, emphasizing the daily mileage and the early mornings, and asked everyone to consider whether or not this trip would be a good fit.
This was our itinerary, and it contains my notes regarding car staging, as I was hoping to “leapfrog” each day to avoid any unnecessary driving.
Wed. Oct. 28: Arrive at Somerset Campground anytime after 3 p.m. Birch and Aspen cabins are reserved.
Thurs. Oct. 29 MI LP 607.5 (map MI-LP-088) – Hillsdale Meat near the Ohio border. (MI-LP-090 mile 618) Hike 10.5 miles. (road walk).
Car staging: Drive to Hillsdale County Meats and drop two cars (33 minute drive from campground). Drive to Pittsford Road trailhead and begin hike. At the end of hike, we will drive back to the cabin from Hillsdale County Meats and leave the cars at the Pittsford Road trailhead so they are already staged for Friday. (Call meatshop and ask for permission to park/)
Fri. Oct. 30 Hike MI LP 594.5 parking area to Pittsford Road trailhead MI LP 607.5 (P) 13 miles
Car staging: End point cars already staged. Drive from campground to parking area near 594.5 (Corner of Griswold and Barnard) in Hillsdale. Leave cars at 594.5 for Saturday’s end point.
Sat. Oct. 31 MI LP 594.5- 579.5 (P in Litchfield at corner of Mill and S. Chicago/public lot next to Litchfield Grain) 15 miles
Car staging: Drive to 579.5 to begin hike. Finish at 594.5 and drive back to campground. Retrieve cars from 579.5, as we will need to pack up Sunday morning.
Sun. Nov. 1 579.5-569.25 (P in Homer on S. Webster between Platt and E. Leigh in park across from Homer Public Works) 10.25 miles
Car staging: Drive to 579.5 to leave cars, then drive to 569.5 to begin hike. After hike, return drivers to cars.
We ended up with six women all together, three in each of the cabins that were supposed to sleep 7, which worked out well as no one really wants to climb bunkbed ladders in the middle of the night to pee! We also found that the cabins, which are attached, had zero noise insulation, so it was good that we kept similar schedules, as you could literally hear every word spoken in the neighboring cabin. However, the beds were comfy enough, it was great shelter, electricity is always nice, and a shower at the end of the day–that was just amazing!
We all arrived at various times on Wednesday, and spent a little time chatting. Three of the ladies were already friends, and through the following days, we all got to know each other better. We made plans to leave the campground by 7:00 a.m. Thursday in order to stage cars and be hiking by 8, when it would be light out. I was worried about the limited daylight, hence the early start.
Road walk is generally not my favorite, but walking by scenic farms as the sun rises is not such a bad thing. Dogs announced our presence to all within earshot, ducks quacked a welcome, and curious horses ambled over to the fence to check us out. There was almost no traffic, and we chatted as we walked, enjoying the sun, scenery, and good company. By early afternoon, we had arrived at our staged cars at Hillsdale County Meats. We went in and bought some baked treats before heading back to the campground. Rain arrived later that afternoon, and we sat out on the cabin porches under the overhang while it fell, considering ourselves lucky to have shelter. Some eventually headed out to dinner, while a couple of us stayed back and ate food we had brought with us. We decided that evening that we could probably start a little later the next day, as we had a little less driving to do, and we had finished today’s hike with plenty of daylight to spare.
Friday’s hike began with a bike path along the mill pond in Hillsdale, and with an addition to our group: Elizabeth from Adrian, who joined us for the day. Maybe a mile or two into the walk, Lisa headed into the brush for a potty break, and emerged with a deer skull and antlers that she was super excited about. She stowed it safely so she could pick it up later and possibly use it in some art work.
After a bit, the bike path became road walk, and then we entered the Lost Nations State Game Area. It was nice to be hiking on dirt instead of pavement. The fall colors were still close to peak, and I felt lucky to have been able to have fall in the U.P., then at home in Charlevoix, and again on this trip! We were startled by a whole bunch of gunfire, and eventually noticed on the map that there was a shooting range nearby. We had several stream crossings via downed logs, and a few big hills as we neared the Pittsford Road trail head where we had left cars yesterday. While it had been somewhat chilly in the morning, it warmed up enough to be a comfortable day of hiking. We headed to Main Street Pizza in Jonesville to gorge ourselves after the hike, and headed back to camp. I had brought wood for a fire, but it was chilly enough that I wasn’t motivated to follow through.
The next day we headed to a parking lot across the street from the Litchfield Grain Company to begin our hike back into Hillsdale, where we had left cars the day before. This was another day of mostly road walk, and our longest: about 15 miles. We had plans to have dinner at the Hillsdale Brewing Company as a reward after completing the hike. We had some bike path, some roadwalk, and I think the high point of the day for most of us came when we walked by a house with a small corral with two mini-donkeys. Peg called out to their owner, who was working in the yard, asking for permission to approach them, and he gave us permission to do so. We were so excited!!! The donkeys were amenable to being petted, and the man told us his story of adopting the donkeys after his parents’ death. We eventually pried ourselves away from this sweet scene, and continued our walk.
Gradually, our country setting turned into urban sprawl, which wasn’t terribly pleasant, but we did pass a Dairy Queen and Debbie declared an ice cream emergency, so we stopped. We were tickled to discover everything was 50% off because it was their 5th anniversary! I also decided that it will be my personal policy to always stop for ice cream if the opportunity presents itself on an NCT hike. I think the odds of that are pretty slim, except for Kilwin’s in Petoskey, if I remember correctly!
One of the confusing things about road walk is that there aren’t generally blue blazes painted on trees every fifty feet or so, and it’s harder to tell where you need to turn, especially when you’re tired and slaphappy. As we entered downtown Hillsdale, we missed a spot where we should have turned off of the bike path onto a road, and so we hiked a little extra on our longest day of hiking. Everyone was a good sport about this, but jeesh! We had hiked enough! Luckily, the Hillsdale Brewing Company had fabulous food and we ended the day on a happy note, bellies full. We moved all of our cars back to the cabin so it would be possible to pack up from the cabins in the morning. It was Halloween night, and we enjoyed seeing all of the trick-or-treaters as we passed through town.
Sunday was daylight savings time, so while we had planned for a later start to allow time to pack, we were all ready to go an hour before our agreed upon time, so off we went, staging cars at the grain company again, and then driving up to Homer to begin our hike. The river scenes in Homer were pretty, but soon we were out in corn country, with giant trucks passing us occasionally as they delivered silage.
We were again treated to views of horses and cows, and were given the stink eye by one intimidating bull who definitely did not appreciate the attention we showed his herd of cows. As we stopped to eat lunch on the edge of a corn field, an Amish buggy came by. Eventually, dirt road became paved, and sidewalks appeared.
A few in our group found stray Halloween candy as we entered Litchfield, which I guess counts as trail magic. Even though it was a shorter hike today, our feet were tender after four days of mostly road walk, and the hike felt a little slower. But it was a beautiful day with good company, and we all look forward to our next hike together! And oh my gosh, do I love seeing that track in my Gaia recording grow!
