I've talked about it in the past, but this just happened to be one of those times I stumbled across something on Facebook and decided I needed to tuck it away to check out at a future date. When people cross over the Mackinac Bridge from the lower peninsula of Michigan to the upper peninsula of Michigan, they usually go one of two ways. Either they continue North to the town of Sault Ste. Marie on the border of Canada, or they immediately get on US 2 to head West into the vast open expanse of the upper peninsula.
However, there are a few individuals who choose to head East. While there is a lot of land to the East of the bridge, there just isn't that much in the way of population. Which makes it a perfect place to explore. When I saw the story for the "Narnia Trail" on my Facebook feed, I decided it might be worth checking out.
Oddly enough, shortly before we were slated to leave for this trip, @mrsbozz also saw something about the trail and said "hey we should check this out". I laughed and let her know it was already on my agenda. Thus, on a cool Friday morning in July we left the Straits State Park campground and made the 40 minute or so drive to Bush Bay where one end of the trail starts.
Bush Bay sits right next to a large limestone mining operation, and if you look really closely in the second photo above you can just make out a freighter heading towards the quarry to get loaded up with limestone or dolomite or whatever. If you can't see it, don't worry, I have better photos coming in a bit!
I wasn't really sure what to expect from the hike, but in all, it wasn't too bad. I think we ended up hiking something like 7200 steps and 3.31 miles which over this terrain was pretty impressive. According to my wife's Fitbit, the hike gave her 83 active minutes. I think the whole trail is something like four miles long, but we turned back after we got to the "Narnia" part of the trail. Oddly enough, it turns out there was another access point at the other end of the trail and if we had parked there instead of where we did, we could have cut about three miles off our hike.
We weren't complaining, it was a great hike and the scenery was quite beautiful. It was a fun adventure for both of us. As you can see from the photos above, they have the trail quite well marked both coming and going, and they have a trail counter to keep track of how many people access the trail.
The first part of the trail takes you right along the coast of the bay before it eventually turns inland and the open water turns into dense forests. The trail was littered with large rocks like the ones you see above that had all these little pock marks in them. Check out the photos below for more on that.
Eventually, we got to a point where the rocks were pretty massive and we had to do a bit of acrobatics to get through them and stay on the trail. I wouldn't say it was strenuous, but as we were coming back on the trail we passed a few elderly people and we questioned whether or not they would be able to navigate the trail without breaking a hip or something.
Some areas of the trail were a bit muddy, but luckily people had put down logs and other pieces of wood to make the navigation more manageable. In the areas where there weren't rocks, we were often left to deal with tangles of roots. I'm actually shocked my wife didn't come away from this hike with a twisted ankle or something similar. She has some old basketball injuries that tend to flare up after putting stress like this on them.
As I said, after a bit, the trail turns in towards the land and that's where we eventually found the "Narnia" portion of the trail. I'm guessing at some point, someone thought it felt like the primordial forest that the kids were dumped into after going through the wardrobe. They decided to throw up a lamp post and sign and thus the name was earned.
Besides the sign and the large boulders, there isn't much to see at this point. In fact, I think @mrsbozz looked at me and said something like "this is it?". That isn't to imply we were disappointed. In fact, we really enjoyed the hike and it gave us a lot of memories, but if you come here as a Narnia fan hoping to see something spectacular, you are likely going to be disappointed.
Better yet, if you come hoping to find a gateway to the magical land, you are going to be even more disappointed!
I will say that it was kind of cool back in this area because the compacted roots and plant material on the trail made it sound like you were walking on a hardwood floor as you traversed some of the rocky tree covered areas. It was pretty surreal.
After hanging around the "lamppost" for a bit, we decided to turn back. If I had known how close we were to the other access point, I might have had us do the full circuit, but the fact is, the farther we walked away from our truck, the further we had to walk back to it. I'm not really sure the other half mile of the trail would have shown us much more than we had already seen.
If you enjoy nature, hiking, and beautiful views, I highly recommend this trail. It was pretty awesome and I wouldn't hesitate to go back and visit it again. I think if we hadn't been so focused on the "Narnia" part of the trail, we likely would have spent more time in the first mile or so just enjoying the views. That isn't to say the moss covered boulders and trees weren't cool, but if that is all you are focused on, you are really missing out.
We got lucky and the bugs weren't too bad on our hike, but I was constantly keeping a wary eye out for black bears which are pretty common in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
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