A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of touring the eastern half of Monroe County with both Richard Micka and Ryan Bowles.  Micka is a retired LA-Z-BOY executive and Monroe community activist.  Bowles is a statistics professor at Michigan State University and president of the North Country Trail chapter working to create trail through NW Ohio and SE/SC Michigan.

The goal of our tour was to test the idea of a North Country Trail reroute through Monroe County.  For those who are unfamiliar, the NCT is a national trail affiliated with the National Park Service.  It begins in New York State, passes through the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan before ending in North Dakota.  It is a fantastically varied route.  And it is roughly half-done.

In our region, the trail passes through Oak Openings Metropark, follows the Wabash-Cannonball rail trail before entering Michigan in Hillsdale County.

One difficulty of the trail has been a 17-mile road walk through Hillsdale County.  So, Bowles has been investigating the possibility of following the Huron River to Flat Rock and then cutting south through the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge along Monroe County’s Lake Erie shore before reuniting with the current NCT route via the Ottawa River and a new greenway that is developing between Secor and Oak Opening Metroparks in Toledo.

During our tour, we found much public land in patches along the Lake Erie shore.  There are some fantastically beautiful areas in Pointe Mouillee and elsewhere.  There is also an old interurban rail route that still extends through much of Monroe County.  However, this would and will be a long-term project.  And passage through northern areas of Toledo would be difficult.

So, the current route and 17 mile gap is likely to remain the official main NCT route.  Bowles, however, notes in a new Steve Pollick column in the Toledo Blade that he would like to see a 300 mile officially-designated NCT spur that would pass through Monroe.

Personally, I think that this is a fantastic idea.  Check out Pollick’s story here:

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091018/COLUMNIST22/910180371

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