Heading south from Mackinaw City today, we stumbled across the North Central trail which is, obviously, in north central Michigan, well the lower mitten-shaped part of Michigan. We saw the trail as we were planning out our route on Google-Maps last night and had pretty much decided to not use it, since the trail's website said that it wasn't paved. But as we rode alongside the trail on the adjacent road, Paul C suggested that we just go and look at the trail. We began riding on it, and were pleasantly surprised at how good the surface was.
The trail surface is a finely crushed limestone and it's almost as good as pavement. The really nice thing about the trail was that it was closely lined with forest on both sides and today's headwind/crosswind was significantly reduced by the trees. So while the trail surface was slower than that of an asphalt highway, we probably got today's distance in more quickly than if we'd been on the road. And we were away from the traffic for most of the day.
The trail was mostly flat for the first 30 miles and rode along Mullet Lake for a good portion of that.
We didn't quite get off of the trail in time as a drenching thunderstorm nailed us. Fortunately we were able to take refuge in a giant pipe that the trail went through, a few minutes after the storm hit, and were able to escape the brunt of the fury. The last 30 miles of the trail had a gentle upward climb of 500' with several scenic vistas and a neat old trestle going over the railroad bed.
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