Backpacking the North Country Trail- Pictured Rocks, Upper Peninsula Michigan
- Bree Kozak
- Aug 2, 2019
- 4 min read
Finally, after years of gathering all the essential equipment, I took my first ever real backpacking trip. Me and my friend Brooke decided on the North Country Trail at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore near Munising, Michigan. Our trip was from July 19-21, 2019.
Choosing our campsites was no easy task at first. We did not prepare very long in advance, so we decided to call the park rangers and ask for advice. We were informed there were only two sites available on the trail; the first day would be an 8 mile hike, and the second two days would be around 15 miles. We poured over the 19 page "Back Country Planner" to consult the map and review safety information, which I highly recommend doing if you are thinking of going to this beautiful park. It can be found here:
https://www.nps.gov/piro/planyourvisit/upload/BackcountryPlanner2016.pdf
Below is a map with the trail. We parked our car on the west end, at Miners Castle, and took a shuttle to the East end ($25 per person), Grand Sable visitor center. The plan was to walk back to the car by the end of day three. Circled are the two camp sites we booked in advanced ($5 for a nightly permit).
We got day 1 started at Grand Sable Visitor Center at about 10 am.
We took a leisurely pace and winded around a lake, through the woods and finally up to the coastline where we caught our first view of the crystal-clear water near Log Slide, a huge sand dune that you are warned takes five minutes to climb down and an hour to climb back up..
We arrived at our campsite at about 3 PM after 7.1 miles and quickly set up our tents due to the abundance of biting flies and mosquitos. We had the rest of the night to filter water from Lake Superior, socialize with the other 5 groups also staying at Au Sable campsite and eat dinner around a fire. It was strange, but the twilight seemed to last forever and it didn't really get dark until around 11 pm.
Our next day was a long one and we got started on the trail at 9 am after breakfast. Just a half mile down the path, we arrived at Au Sable Lighthouse, and then the next 3 miles brought us to several beautiful beaches that we stopped to rest our feet in the cool sand and even get our feet wet (despite the water being 60 degrees). "Shipwrecks" is a nice beach at Hurricane River and Twelve Mile beach offers and even bigger white-sand beach to enjoy.
The path snaked along the shoreline and dipped back into the woods when it started drizzling a bit. Never enough to have to put on raingear- we lucked out! The day wore on and on, and we got pretty weary once 7 pm rolled around and we still had several miles to go. We had no choice but to go on despite having achy feet and swatting away hordes of mosquitos.
This day ended up feeling very long and we took breaks when we needed to. We didn't arrive to our campsite until 9:45 pm and boy, I was never so happy to see a campsite. It was a lovely location near Beaver Lake in a grassy meadow. Only us and a handful of other campers were at this quiet lake. It was amazing to lay down in the tent that night after seeing the plentiful stars & not having cell phone service all day. We slept like babies and rested our weary feet.
That's me enjoying my morning coffee at Beaver Lake on Day 3!
So, we decided to scrap our original plan of hiking the final 15 miles back to the car given that our bodies felt pretty broken after doing 22 miles in 2 days. We hiked to the nearest parking area and convinced some very lovely people to give us a ride to the main road that the shuttle runs on. I tried my hand at hitchhiking (I had some previous experience in Europe) and as luck would have it, the first car to pass picked us up and drove us the rest of the way back to our car. The last segment of the trail arguably is likely the most memorable, where "Pictured Rocks" gets its namesake and the famous "Lovers Leap/Archway" Advertised on Pure Michigan commercials is. Never fear though- we still got to enjoy this segment, but from the comfort of a scenic 2 hour cruise! Click through the gallery and enjoy.
Even though our trip did not go 100% as planned, I would say for my first ever backpacking camping trip it was a success! If you plan on doing the same, I recommend booking at least a month in advance to hopefully get campsites that are more closely space together and perhaps doing the trip over 4 days instead of three. Four 10 mile days sounds more manageable than trying to cram 40 miles into three days. Can't wait for my next adventure!
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