Brighton Recreation Area: glacier hills, Bishop Lake, and miles of trail

You can fake a trip “up north” without leaving Livingston County, and the Brighton Recreation Area is how you do it. Nearly 5,000 acres of rolling hills, woods, and little lakes sprawl between Howell and Brighton — terrain a glacier left behind when it dragged its load of gravel south and dropped it here in lumpy heaps. Most of the park opens out from the Bishop Lake area.

If you walk, there are foot-only loops: the Penosha runs about five miles through wooded hills and wetland, and the shorter Kahchin keeps it quick. Mountain bikers get their own purpose-built tracks from the Bishop Lake trailhead, including the Torn Shirt — an advanced loop steep and twisty and narrow enough that riders trade stories about it the way fishermen trade stories about the one that got away. There is a big network open to horses too, so on a good day the park holds hikers, bikers, and riders all at once without anyone tripping over anyone.

Off the trails, the lakes are good for fishing and paddling, the day-use spots have swimming, and the campgrounds run from rustic tent sites to setups with hitching posts for the horse crowd. It is a state park, so a Michigan Recreation Passport on your windshield is the price of admission.

What makes it worth keeping in your back pocket is the range. It is big and close and varied enough that you can pick the day to match your mood — a flat lakeside stroll, a lung-burning bike loop on Torn Shirt, or a long ride through the back acres — and be home before dinner without a single mile of highway between you and the trailhead.