The Betsie Valley & the Rails — a stop on M-22.
Inland from Frankfort runs the Betsie River valley, and it carries one of the nicest rail-trails in the state — worth knowing about if you've got bikes on the car or you're coming back this way.
The Betsie Valley Trail runs roughly twenty-two miles from Frankfort up through Beulah on Crystal Lake and on toward Thompsonville, laid on the bed of the old railroad that used to feed the car-ferry docks. It's flat, it's mostly shaded, and the stretch along the south shore of Crystal Lake is genuinely lovely.
The river itself is one of Michigan's best trout and salmon streams. In autumn, salmon run up out of the lake to spawn and die, and the whole valley smells of it — which sounds grim but is one of the great wildlife spectacles of the region, and it draws eagles and bears to the banks.
This is also a reminder of how much of northern Michigan's recreation is built on the corpse of its industry. The rail-trail is a dead railroad. The harbor is a dead ferry port. The forest is a cut-over. Almost every good thing up here is the second use of something that failed.
Back on M-22, we're running north now toward the point and the light.