The National Park Service is ready to build a new hiking trail in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
The Kettles Trail will be on a piece of parkland that is inland a number of miles—near Maple City—and not connected to the rest of the lakeshore.
Sleeping Bear’s Chief of Natural Resources, Kevin Skerl, says the 2.2-mile loop will take hikers to an overlook of a bog. It will have natural features not found elsewhere in the park.
“That includes these kettle formations which are depressions left by the glaciers when they retreated.”
Parking will be off Baatz Road. Plans for a second parking area at the north end of the trail system were dropped because of concerned neighbors.
Park employees refer to this area as the Bow Lakes Unit, but the trail will not get to the lakes. There are some private property owners within the park boundary in this area and Skerl says the park service wants to “discourage adventuring onto private land.”
Skerl says work on Kettles Trail could begin this fall.
Staff at Sleeping Bear Dunes are also developing hiking trail that will cover most of the National Lakeshore. The proposed Bay to Bay Trail will stretch from Platte Bay to Good Harbor Bay and is in the earliest stages of development.
