View Sharonville SGA: Norvell Rd. East in a larger map 

I have mentioned in prior blog posts that I have been working on a good route across the Sharonville State Game Area along the border of Washtenaw and Jackson Counties.  This post continues that series and focuses on a route that links Norvell Road with Fishville Road near a small lake.

The hike begins just to the south and east of the intersection of Norvell and Orban Roads.  The DNR parking area is sited within an area of the game area that is still farmed to create feeding areas for game.  This makes the first section of the hike extremely difficult.  During my visit, I had to contend with hiking along a newly-plowed field.  It is generally bad form to hike across a field in cultivation, so I followed the field edge.  This was not completely satisfactory.  The vegetation at the field edge was quite thick and there was little margin between this vegetation and the plowed rows.  The result was that I had to hike over the plowed field occasionally.  This requires care, given the potentially bad footing.

After hiking due east for about a quarter mile and due north for a few tenths, I came to an impressive tree and followed a property edge east.  This property edge turned into a two-track that actually creates a large circle on this section of state land.  At the easternmost point of this circle, I headed north and east.

The most difficult aspect of this section of land is that it is criss-crossed with drainage ditches.  These move in various directions, making it difficult to follow a straight direction for any length of time.  With a little bit of exploration, I found an easy water crossing and two small culverts that allowed me to move east in the vicinity of a small lake.  North of the lake, there are two paths that move through some woods and vegetation.  These can be muddy and overgrown, but they do give two descent routes towards the east.

In a prior blog post, I have written about a hike to this general location from the east.  I have not quite put these two hikes together, but I feel very confident that this section of the game area is capable of being crossed without terrible difficulty.

Previous hike in this area:

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/expatriate/2008/05/sharonville-state-game-area-unnamed-lake-hike/

Official DNR map:

http://www.michigandnr.com/publications/pdfs/huntingwildlifehabitat/sga/sharonville.pdf

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