Wisconsin NCT: The Journey Begins

 As you all know, the Appalachian Trail holds a special place in my heart, and I've made several trips to hike sections of it the last few years.  But before the Appalachian Trail, came the North Country Trail.  Among my "ultra" crazy running friends is Matt.  Back in 2019, he started posting in a Michigan running group about running the North Country Trail (NCT) in Michigan, section by section.  I had never heard of this trail, which is 4,800 miles long, spanning from North Dakota to Vermont.  The Michigan portion of the NCT is 1,200 miles, and Matt wanted to run all of it.  He started posting section runs, covering 20-40 miles, one Saturday per month.  Over time, and even through the pandemic, these runs gathered more participants.  Over the last few years, I have joined in on as many of these runs as I could.  Sometimes it was just Matt and me, and sometimes we'd have groups of nearly 20 runners.  As the trail took us farther and farther north, the runs turned into two-day events, to get more miles out of the distance we'd have to drive.  When the runs took us to the Upper Peninsula, there were just a handful of us who continued to make the trips, but man, did we have some amazing adventures.  I honestly cannot even think of a single bad day I've had on the NCT, including my many falls, and despite all of the crazy weather we have endured!

In the winter, when running across the U.P. would've been pretty tough, we headed down to Ohio to gather NCT miles in that state.  I have to say, Ohio on the NCT is quite different than Michigan!  Last year, Matt completed every mile of North Country Trail in Michigan and, along with Tanya, began to set his sights on other states, too.  We've kept Ohio as our "winter" NCT spot, but we have gotten a good portion of Pennsylvania covered, and Matt has also gotten some New York and Minnesota miles as well.  It is not my goal to cover all of the NCT on foot, but I do love to join in on his trips whenever I can.

This year, after covering a good section in and around Hocking Hills in Ohio, and then about 85 miles of trail in Pennsylvania, I decided to join Matt and Tanya on a bit of a different style of trip to Wisconsin.  Wisconsin is home to 212 miles of North Country Trail, and we planned to complete the whole state in just two trips.  Here was the plan: 

Day 1: Drive to Ironwood, Michigan and share a hotel

Day 2: Hike 20 miles from the Michigan border west into Wisconsin and stay at the hotel

Day 3: Hike 19.3 miles west and camp at a campground

Days 4-6: Backpack 56ish miles west, finding places to camp along the way

Day 7: Drive home

It was a lofty goal, with some long, high mileage days planned, but the three of us were up for the challenge!

Day One

Saturday, September 6, 2025

Today was road trip day!  I am a huge fan of road trips in general, but anytime I get to road trip across the Upper Peninsula, I get extra excited.  There is something about crossing the Mackinaw Bridge and getting to that glorious northern land that just does it for me.  Oh, and regarding the crossing of the bridge...I saw a backup on the bridge on my map and thought it was either a slow down at the toll booths or some sort of accident.  Imagine my surprise to find that bridge traffic was narrowed to one northbound lane because it was Tractor Day on the bridge!  Hundreds of farm tractors of every size and age filled the right lane!  Okay, I guess I could share the bridge with these cool people!  It was a chilly, overcast morning with a stiff wind and they looked sooooo cold on their open-air tractors!  I bet they will remember that ride across the bridge for a long time!

And then I was in the U.P.  Ahhhh.  Deep breath in and out and ahhhhhhhh.  I opted to take the northern route across to Ironwood because I cannot resist that Lake Superior shoreline!  Through Germfask, Seney, Munising, Marquette, Ishpeming, Merriweather, Wakefield, Bessemer, and finally I was in Ironwood!  

Our reservations for the next two nights were at the Royal Motel, and let me tell you, it was sooo Royal.  Haha!  It was a classic U.P. motel and it suited our needs perfectly.  And the bathroom?  The bathroom says it all.  See how there are 12 different surfaces, all different in color, but then the shower curtain just magically ties it all together?  That's Pure Michigan right there.

We got ourselves unpacked and headed to the next day's finish spot to drop off my truck.  I am always slightly nervous when we have to leave our cars in such remote places, but we have never had any issues (knock on wood.)  It's hard to imagine anything bad happening in this peaceful location, right?

 Then it was time to head into town for dinner.  We ended up at Don & GG's Food and Spirits for our meal.  We were in a strange land of a combination of Michiganders and Wisconsinites, but much to our delight, both the Michigan and Michigan State football games were on their big screens! We had a really great dinner, watched some football and chatted about our upcoming adventure.

And then we were back at the motel, making final plans and packing gear.  Tomorrow we'd be heading into Wisconsin!