County parks in Monroe, Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties are something of a grab bag.  There are some nice areas, but lack of funding, poor planning and competing uses can diminish the natural experience in some of these places.

Today I visited a park that is really quite interesting.  Kathe & Cali’s Memorial Park in Hillsdale County’s Somerset Township memorializes two women named Katherine McNutt Zakrzewski and Calista Elizabeth Zakrzewski.  I have to admit that I don’t know the story about these two women.  The park web site doesn’t say and I didn’t see a plaque with an explanation.  But I am pretty certain that family members donated this twenty acre site to the county in their memory.

Finding the park is a bit of an adventure.  Visitors should take US-12 west from the intersection of US-127 and US-12.  After about five miles, one should turn south onto Jerome Road and then east onto Gray Goose Road.  Gray Goose turns into Lakeview Drive at Goose Lake.  This is a one-way loop through a cottage community.  Follow the loop until the county park access road appears.  This road is quite narrow and hilly.  It leads to a parking area next to a cottage.

Given the size of this park - twenty acres - it is quite remarkable that a visitor will find 2.5 miles of hiking trail here.  These official trails are found in wooded areas along the eastern and southern areas of the park.  The official park map, posted below, shows these trails in green.

The terrain for the green trails is actually pretty good.  There are some decent hills here.  The woods are mature and the ground is a combination of sand, grass, two-track and field stone.  There are many, many rocks here.  This area certainly received some great gifts during the last period of glaciation.

The northernmost area of the park shows the best evidence of this rocky, glaciated past.  The official park map shows this northern area as “8 acres for future development,” but this old field is hikeable.  The northern border of the park is one of the best preserved fieldstone walls that I have seen in any southeastern Michigan park.  It runs for almost the entire length of the park’s northern boundary.  It is impressive and recalls an interesting agricultural past.  I have placed this additional hike route on my rough virtual earth map that follows this post.

From the easternmost portions of the park, it is possible to see Goose Lake in the distance.  The park itself never allows a close approach to the lake.  However, the adventurous park entry road makes a perfectly hikeable path to the nearby low-use lake community roads.  These allow for an additional mile or so of walking and add some great lake views to the route.  I have placed these routes onto the map below as well.

All told, the park and adjoining cottage roads allow for a walk of 3.5 to 4 miles.  That’s a decent hike.  This hike is really just marginally worthwhile, given the close proximity to a much better hike at the Somerset State Game Area.  But it is an interesting place that seems to be the work of an incredibly loving family.

Here’s the Microsoft Virtual Earth map:

http://tinyurl.com/2bzcm8

This is the official park website:

http://www.co.hillsdale.mi.us/k_c_park/index.html

Click below for a lake map of Goose Lake:

http://tinyurl.com/yqeywv

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