I started planning this trip a while ago. The story goes that some guy who lives in Northern WI now and went to college in SoCal created the route after falling in love with Baja. He wanted a bit of that experience in the Midwest and since prerunning was called a plane crash, thus the name. A link to the original GPX and description.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1UHxgzvWE_7Qs2GUNmO5_CDapXwfBK4Mb&shorturl=1&ll=46.52843932268665,-88.39666265000001&z=8
A couple friends and I decided to do it this year. It was a lot of trails, lots of dirt, and great weather. Even got to see the Northern Lights! As far as Rigs, we had my Jeep, My friend Steve has a 23 Ranger Tremor, and My friend John has a 22 Chevy Colorado Z71. We prepped for 3 nights of camping along the way.
Day 1 was a long drive. I drove from home to Ludington to catch the Badger across the lake. That was a neat experience.
4 hours across Lake Mi and they have plenty of Activities (including Badger Bingo!) to keep you occupied. Its about 60 miles across from Ludington to Manitowoc, Wi where we disembarked. We checked out a Star Wars themed (accidentally) restaurant in Green Bay called Cheesesteak Rebellion. Pretty awesome place. Nice beer selection and good sandwiches. Once our bellies were full, we burned up to Cranden, which was about 3 hours. We stayed at Pine Lake national forest campground, just north of town. Beautiful rustic campground, very well maintained.
Steve has a really sweet setup for the back of his Ranger.
The little hammock in the background was my camping spot. First time camping in a hammock, and it took some adjustment. By the third night, I was sleeping pretty well. This is panoramic shot of Pine Lake. It looked really nice, but no beach spot for a swim.
We were stuffed from lunch still, so just some jerky and cheese for dinner.
Next day, we hit the trails. Wisconsin trails were generally much better than Michigan trails. Better maintenance, smoother, better marked. We stopped and checked out a point of interest on the map, called Elvoy Spring. Nice little pond with a board walk. We watched the ducks for a bit and motored on.
Trail Day One concluded at Courtney Lake National Park Campground. We ran about 150 miles on mostly trails. Long day. We did have enough energy to check out the beach area and go for a quick dip to cool off (it was about 85 degrees all day). Another beautiful campsite and I got some nice pictures at night, including the Aurora Borealis!
Courtney Lake right outside our site
a better pic of my sleeping set-up. It was the first time I've tried a hammock enclosure and I dig it. Pretty comfortable once you learn how to hang it and sleep in it
And a nice pic of the three rigs.
Mentioned the Northern Lights
Day two we spent a lot of time in the Mass City / Rock Land area. Our first stop was Victoria Dam. I've been here a few times and it always a good place to visit. The Flow this time though was incredible. More than I've ever seen. We Ooh'ed and Ahhh'ed for about an hour here.
panoramic shot of the whole damn
And our three rigs...
After the dam, we checked out a site at the Minnesota Mine called Site C. This was a really fun trail, much more technical than a standard two track and we found an incredible vantage point on the top of the mountain.
We had to take some posed shots on the edge!
I also drove my happy ass up the rock trail to the summit
Coming back down. This part of the trail was more SxS than Pick-up truck accessible...I think the guys could have done it, but they didn't want to damage anything and we'd have had to go 1x a time.
Nice shot of the trail we took to get to the top of this little mountain. Switchbacks, steep climbs, rocks, and off camber. LOTS OF FUN!!!
Next up was a drive to Adventure Mine and a Hike to the top of the bluffs above Mass City. There is a trail to drive up here, but its a bit extreme for the two guys in pick-ups...and to be honest, I don't know if I would have had the stones to take my Jeep up. It was pretty wild, and more washed out and rutted than the last time I was up here in a SxS.
I also mentioned in my build thread about the mud hole we found...It was looking for the trails to get to this lookout point.
The boys got a kick out of this and chickened out on going through. I had to do some emergency roadside radiator cleaning to get my temps under control.
Our last stop in Mass City were the FireSteel Trestles. The trestles are on the Bill Nichols trail, which is an old RR grade leftover from the mining days when they used rail to transport the copper from the Keweenaw to Ontonagon.
From youtube, here is a drone image. The surface of the bridge is about 150 feet over the top of the water. Its pretty nuts to look down! There are three trestles in total.
After the trestles we bombed on the highway vs the potholed and washboarded Bill Nichols (nice job, MiDNR) and had lunch in Twin Lakes. Found this VERY rare Grand Caravan, Hellcat edition
.
Once of these things is not like the others...
Once we got to Toivola we jumped back on the trail and ran a couple trails that I know vs the main trail to South Range. Once in South Range, we jump back on the nichols trail and headed to Boston, where I have some property. That was our campsite for the night.
Wednesday Morning, Steve had to bug out early to make it home for an appointment the next day. John and I elected to call an audible from finishing the "real" 7 hour plane crash, since we've both been to Copper Harbor numerous times. We decided to check out the Huron Mountains. Mount Arvon is there, which is the highest point in Michigan. There is also what is call the "rock cut" which is another artifact of the mining industry and looks really neat. Due to some difficulties in mapping software, we got to Mt Arvon just fine, but our route to the rock cut was actually a hiking trail...which wasn't going to work with our rigs. So we doubled back and looked to another route we found on OnX. That turned into a very rough trail (easy, but very rough and slow going) and we just flat ran out of time. The route was to go between Big Eric's Bridge and Van Riper State park. We made it about 25% but then turned around, just because it was getting late in the afternoon and John still was trying to get to the bridge.
Mount Arvon is very cool through. The lumber company that owns the property has cleared some trees to create a lookout.
and the Survey Marker to prove it!
The last spot we explored was Big Eric's Bridge. This bridge is over the Huron River and there are some really nice falls here. My pictures don't do this area justice and I saved the campground as a possible place to stay next time this trip comes around.
This area really requires a couple days to explore. Lots of things to see between L'Anse and Marquette.
In short, it was a GREAT trip. Good memories, great friends, and being disconnected from our "regular" lives and reconnected with nature. Its really what got me into wheeling in the first place. It has also made me want to change or finish a bunch of projects in my build. More to come on that....since my stereo broke on this trip, I had a 9 hour ride back home lost in my thoughts thinking about next steps for my Jeep!
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1UHxgzvWE_7Qs2GUNmO5_CDapXwfBK4Mb&shorturl=1&ll=46.52843932268665,-88.39666265000001&z=8
A couple friends and I decided to do it this year. It was a lot of trails, lots of dirt, and great weather. Even got to see the Northern Lights! As far as Rigs, we had my Jeep, My friend Steve has a 23 Ranger Tremor, and My friend John has a 22 Chevy Colorado Z71. We prepped for 3 nights of camping along the way.
Day 1 was a long drive. I drove from home to Ludington to catch the Badger across the lake. That was a neat experience.
4 hours across Lake Mi and they have plenty of Activities (including Badger Bingo!) to keep you occupied. Its about 60 miles across from Ludington to Manitowoc, Wi where we disembarked. We checked out a Star Wars themed (accidentally) restaurant in Green Bay called Cheesesteak Rebellion. Pretty awesome place. Nice beer selection and good sandwiches. Once our bellies were full, we burned up to Cranden, which was about 3 hours. We stayed at Pine Lake national forest campground, just north of town. Beautiful rustic campground, very well maintained.
Steve has a really sweet setup for the back of his Ranger.
The little hammock in the background was my camping spot. First time camping in a hammock, and it took some adjustment. By the third night, I was sleeping pretty well. This is panoramic shot of Pine Lake. It looked really nice, but no beach spot for a swim.
We were stuffed from lunch still, so just some jerky and cheese for dinner.
Next day, we hit the trails. Wisconsin trails were generally much better than Michigan trails. Better maintenance, smoother, better marked. We stopped and checked out a point of interest on the map, called Elvoy Spring. Nice little pond with a board walk. We watched the ducks for a bit and motored on.
Trail Day One concluded at Courtney Lake National Park Campground. We ran about 150 miles on mostly trails. Long day. We did have enough energy to check out the beach area and go for a quick dip to cool off (it was about 85 degrees all day). Another beautiful campsite and I got some nice pictures at night, including the Aurora Borealis!
Courtney Lake right outside our site
a better pic of my sleeping set-up. It was the first time I've tried a hammock enclosure and I dig it. Pretty comfortable once you learn how to hang it and sleep in it
And a nice pic of the three rigs.
Mentioned the Northern Lights
Day two we spent a lot of time in the Mass City / Rock Land area. Our first stop was Victoria Dam. I've been here a few times and it always a good place to visit. The Flow this time though was incredible. More than I've ever seen. We Ooh'ed and Ahhh'ed for about an hour here.
panoramic shot of the whole damn
And our three rigs...
After the dam, we checked out a site at the Minnesota Mine called Site C. This was a really fun trail, much more technical than a standard two track and we found an incredible vantage point on the top of the mountain.
We had to take some posed shots on the edge!
I also drove my happy ass up the rock trail to the summit
Coming back down. This part of the trail was more SxS than Pick-up truck accessible...I think the guys could have done it, but they didn't want to damage anything and we'd have had to go 1x a time.
Nice shot of the trail we took to get to the top of this little mountain. Switchbacks, steep climbs, rocks, and off camber. LOTS OF FUN!!!
Next up was a drive to Adventure Mine and a Hike to the top of the bluffs above Mass City. There is a trail to drive up here, but its a bit extreme for the two guys in pick-ups...and to be honest, I don't know if I would have had the stones to take my Jeep up. It was pretty wild, and more washed out and rutted than the last time I was up here in a SxS.
I also mentioned in my build thread about the mud hole we found...It was looking for the trails to get to this lookout point.
The boys got a kick out of this and chickened out on going through. I had to do some emergency roadside radiator cleaning to get my temps under control.
Our last stop in Mass City were the FireSteel Trestles. The trestles are on the Bill Nichols trail, which is an old RR grade leftover from the mining days when they used rail to transport the copper from the Keweenaw to Ontonagon.
From youtube, here is a drone image. The surface of the bridge is about 150 feet over the top of the water. Its pretty nuts to look down! There are three trestles in total.
After the trestles we bombed on the highway vs the potholed and washboarded Bill Nichols (nice job, MiDNR) and had lunch in Twin Lakes. Found this VERY rare Grand Caravan, Hellcat edition
.Once of these things is not like the others...
Once we got to Toivola we jumped back on the trail and ran a couple trails that I know vs the main trail to South Range. Once in South Range, we jump back on the nichols trail and headed to Boston, where I have some property. That was our campsite for the night.
Wednesday Morning, Steve had to bug out early to make it home for an appointment the next day. John and I elected to call an audible from finishing the "real" 7 hour plane crash, since we've both been to Copper Harbor numerous times. We decided to check out the Huron Mountains. Mount Arvon is there, which is the highest point in Michigan. There is also what is call the "rock cut" which is another artifact of the mining industry and looks really neat. Due to some difficulties in mapping software, we got to Mt Arvon just fine, but our route to the rock cut was actually a hiking trail...which wasn't going to work with our rigs. So we doubled back and looked to another route we found on OnX. That turned into a very rough trail (easy, but very rough and slow going) and we just flat ran out of time. The route was to go between Big Eric's Bridge and Van Riper State park. We made it about 25% but then turned around, just because it was getting late in the afternoon and John still was trying to get to the bridge.
Mount Arvon is very cool through. The lumber company that owns the property has cleared some trees to create a lookout.
and the Survey Marker to prove it!
The last spot we explored was Big Eric's Bridge. This bridge is over the Huron River and there are some really nice falls here. My pictures don't do this area justice and I saved the campground as a possible place to stay next time this trip comes around.
This area really requires a couple days to explore. Lots of things to see between L'Anse and Marquette.
In short, it was a GREAT trip. Good memories, great friends, and being disconnected from our "regular" lives and reconnected with nature. Its really what got me into wheeling in the first place. It has also made me want to change or finish a bunch of projects in my build. More to come on that....since my stereo broke on this trip, I had a 9 hour ride back home lost in my thoughts thinking about next steps for my Jeep!
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Have you got the mud cleaned out yet?
