The 40-mile trail that follows an old canoe portage

Long before there were roads across the Upper Peninsula, there was the problem of getting a canoe from one Great Lake to the other without paddling all the way around. The answer near Rapid River was to walk it. People carried boats and supplies overland between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior along a route the Chippewa had worn into the land, and that old portage is roughly the path you hike today on the Bay de Noc–Grand Island National Recreation Trail.

The trail starts about two and a half miles east of Rapid River, just north of US-2, and runs north for around forty miles through the Hiawatha National Forest before it ends near Ackerman Lake at M-94. For much of the way it shadows the Whitefish River, staying half a mile to two miles east of the water on high ground, which is exactly the kind of dry footing you’d pick if you were carrying a loaded canoe on your shoulders. The valley opens up to the west in long views you don’t expect from inside a Michigan forest.

It’s a quiet, non-motorized trail — hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders share it, and there are a few large staging areas with hitching rails, wells, and vault toilets where the old camps would have been. You can do a short out-and-back or, if you’re equipped, backpack the whole thing and camp along the way. What gives the walk its weight is knowing the route isn’t an invention of the Forest Service. People moved through this exact corridor for generations, and the woods still carry the line they chose.