Montmorency and Otsego Counties

This is craziness. I'm finally getting to telling about what happened last Tuesday. Last time I was up at my niece's place with my sister. Tuesday morning we woke up, ate our bagels and headed up to Clear Lake State Park. I have this book called Hiking Michigan and this park looked good. Clear Lake is a spring fed lake and you really can see to the bottom.

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The trail was pretty hard to follow. It got a lot narrower after this. The ferns were totally covering it and it was just a single track. Once again, I had a map but the signs weren't very good and I ended up losing the trail. But I knew what direction the park was at so I found my way back to the road and was heading into the park when it started thundering. My sister was sitting in the park reading a book and we had the foresight to check that our phones worked before I left. Unfortunately, most of the park doesn't have cell service. So I called her and asked her to pick me up but I didn't realize the road doesn't go all the way around.

Long story short, we were both freaking out because I felt bad that I told her wrong and she was worried that I was going to get soaked by the approaching storm. The girl at the front told her how to find me and I had decided to stay in one spot by the back entrance and I was very happy when I saw her car approaching. I got in the car and then it started pouring. I was .6 short of 5 miles.

We decided that pie would make us feel better and I steered her to a great restaurant that Wes and I love in Johannesburg. It's called the Old Depot Restaurant and it is really delicious and cute and they have great pie!!! We relaxed for a while, had dessert and then headed for Gaylord.

Gaylord is like most Up North Michigan towns and used to be a lumber town. There was a huge demand for lumber after the 1871 Chicago fire. One thing you notice when in Gaylord is the Alpine theme. It was introduced in the 60's to spur the tourist industry. Normally I find artificially themed towns kind of dumb but Gaylord is okay.

I decided that I would just walk around the town since I hadn't been able to find any hiking trails I wanted to try in Otsego County. I started walking down South Court Street. Now I knew there was a park that had elk in it somewhere in Gaylord but hadn't been able to find it in the car but I happened to walk to it going down Court Street.

Here are the elk. Teeny tiny in the picture.

So then I saw a sign for Alpine Park and it had some awesome trails. Unfortunately it started pouring again and I was soon soaked. I headed back to the car and still had about a mile to go so I walked down to the middle school. There were neat looking houses on the way. I made it back to the car with soaking wet feet and blisters. Grrr!!! But I was finally done with Otsego County.

Next morning I finished up Montmorency County in the road behind my niece's house in the pouring rain again. And again I was thinking I'd do Genesee County on the way home but didn't. I don't know what the deal is. I've decided that I'll do Genesee when I go up to finish the counties in the Thumb.