We spent three nights doing an out and back in the Huron-Manistee National Forest on the North Country Trail (NCT) near White Cloud, Michigan over the 4th of July weekend. It’s a less popular part of the NCT, which helped us avoid crowds. The weather was crazy hot…over 90 F and humid.
Friday, July 3, Loda Lake Wildflower Sanctuary to Bear Creek (7.5 miles)
We started Friday afternoon at the Loda Lake Wildlife Sanctuary, which was completely empty. We took a sanctuary trail that followed the lake to Birch Grove Trail, which merged with the NCT. (Photo of Loda Lake.)
The path by Loda Lake was easy to follow since it has numbered posts to match the map at the entrance. We saw some pretty flowers, but not as much as I expected.
Eventually we ran into Birch Grove Trail, a nice woodsy walk with maintained trails to the NCT. In general, the NCT was easy to follow with clear trails and frequent tags. We really appreciated all the shade from the trees given how hot it was.
The NCT went through the forest for a while longer before crossing an oak savannah and then going back to a forest with a lot of ferns. The oak savannahs are really cool, if not really hot in 90 degree weather.
A little over four miles after merging onto the NCT we came across Bear Creek. This was the first water source after Loda Lake.
We continued on another mile to West Michigan Creek, which is where we had intended on staying the night. But it was very buggy, so we hiked back to camp near at Bear Creek instead. It was a good spot because Bear Creek was nice. But you could hear occasional vehicles going down the roads nearby and fireworks going off in the distance. We ended up hearing fireworks every night.
Saturday, July 4, Bear Creek to Highbank Lake (12 miles)
The next morning we went down the NCT back into the buggy woodsy area around West Michigan Creek.
The NCT eventually popped out at a small boat landing at the southern part of Nichols Lake. Part of the trail around Nichols Lake disappeared into the Lake so we took the social trail that circled the lake.
The trail then veers more inland and crosses 13 Mile Road. We detoured down 13 Mile Road to fill up water at the Nichols Lake FS Campground. Then we backtracked to the NCT and continued towards Leaf Lake, which was very scenic and our favorite part of the hike.
The trail next goes past Condon Lake which had a large group of (loud) car campers. Less than a mile away was Sawkaw Lake with some more (somewhat quieter) campers, but it had a lot of open semi-private spots. We scoped out sites and then continued on to Highbank Lake, which was very buggy. We turned around not too far after Highbank Lake and hiked back to Sawkaw Lake to set up camp there. (Photo of Sawkaw Lake.)
Sunday, July 5, Sawkaw Lake to Bear Creek (10 miles)
Even though we had just hiked the route the day before, the trail back Bear Creek looked different in reverse. This day we saw more wildlife; ducks and deer near Leaf Lake.
We made a pit stop at the northern Nichols lake campground to refill our water again and we saw a little Bambi while circling Nichols Lake.
We camped near Bear Creek again on the way out.
Monday, July 6, Bear Creek to Loda Lake (6.5 miles)
We were short on time this day, but we went at a good pace so we took a slightly different route than when we came in. At the junction between NCT and Birch Grove Trail, we continued down the NCT until we hit Six Mile Road. It was nice to extend our walk, but this section was pretty marshy and not our favorite. Six Mile road back to the car wasn’t bad for a road walk though, and we spotted the most pretty flowers there.
(Photo above of the oak savanna north of the junction of NCT and Birch Grove Trail. Photo below of the lily pond on Six Mile Road.)
For all the details on two newbies trying to figure it out, here’s the longer version of our trip report: https://beginnerbackpackers.blogspot.com/2020/07/huron-manistee-natl-forest-nct-july-4th.html
