28 miles of dirt for motorcycles north of Holton

North of the little crossroads of Holton, the farm fields give way to national forest. Somewhere in the pine and oak, a 28-mile trail twists through the sand, built just for motorcycles. The Holton Motorcycle Trail sits inside the Manistee National Forest, the federal woods that sprawl across the northern edge of Muskegon County. It is one of the better-known dirt-bike runs in the western Lower Peninsula.

It splits at the trailhead. Head south and you get 13 miles open only to highway-legal motorcycles — bikes with plates that could ride there from a paved road. Head north and you get 15 miles open to both. That includes off-road dirt bikes, the kind with no lights or plate, which need a Michigan ORV sticker. Every machine has to be 40 inches wide or less, narrow enough to thread the single track. The ground is just what you would expect this close to the lake: sandy hills, flat to rolling, with grass and ferns under the trees.

It is a genuine terra trail, meaning the surface is just the earth itself — no gravel, no pavement, the dirt packed down by tires. The Forest Service keeps it open year-round but stops maintaining it from December through mid-April, when the sand turns to mud and the snow comes in. The trailhead has room to park about a dozen rigs and trailers.

Idling at the trailhead with the two-strokes ringing in your ears, it is easy to forget where you are. This is the southern edge of a national forest most people picture far to the north. It reaches all the way down into Muskegon County — close enough that a Holton kid can ride a dirt bike straight into federal woods. Bring the ORV sticker, keep it under 40 inches wide, and mind which fork you take.