Thirty paved miles from downtown Midland to Clare, on an old rail bed

You can roll out of downtown Midland on a bike and not stop pedaling for thirty miles. The Pere Marquette Rail-Trail leaves right by the Farmers Market at the Tridge and runs flat and paved all the way west to Clare, following the Tittabawassee for a while and then striking out across old farm and forest country.

It is flat for a reason: the whole thing is laid on a railroad bed. This was once part of the Flint & Pere Marquette line, later CSX track, and when the trains quit, the corridor got paved into a fourteen-foot ribbon of asphalt instead of being let go to brush. That’s why it barely climbs — railroads hate hills, so the grade was already gentle a century before the first cyclist showed up. Along the way you cross old railway bridges and pass through the strung-out string of towns the line used to serve: Sanford, Coleman, Loomis, and finally Clare.

The trail is good enough that the Rails to Trails Conservancy put it in its national Hall of Fame, a short list of the best converted rail corridors in the country. It’s open year-round for anything without a motor — walking, running, inline skating, road biking in summer, cross-country skiing once the snow flies. Families like it because there’s nothing to climb and almost nothing to dodge.

And it keeps getting longer. A connecting stretch from Clare on to Farwell opened in 2024, which means a rider can now link up and pedal something like ninety miles west toward Baldwin without fighting traffic. Start at the Tridge some clear morning, point the front wheel at Clare, and you’ve got a full day’s ride on ground that used to belong to freight trains.