Our trip to Horseshoe Trails near Holton, MI was in June 2007. Two Jeep's made the day long trip and wandered around the two-tracks that mingle with the Cycle Conservation Trails. There are two CCC trails; Horseshoe Trail and Holton Trail. Unfortunately, these trails are reserved for motorcycles, but there are plenty of Jeepable trails that wander around these trails to make this a worthwhile trip.

To set your expectations, this trail is very similar to the Cedar Creek and White Cloud trails that were reviewed earlier. These trails are good for light 4x4'ing with the occassional hill to climb or dead tree to go under/around.

As usual, we started the day with a good breakfast. This time we stopped in Newaygo, MI at a restaurant called Cronk's Oakridge Restaurant. They have a great breakfast at a reasonable. It took a little while to get served, but that seems to be our luck wherever we go lately.

After breakfast, we headed towards Holton, MI via Fremont. Actually, it was never our plan to go to Fremont, but if you follow route 82 west out of Newaygo if curves north and before you know it, you're in Fremont. Not a problem, we jig-jogged around to B31 and took that south to Holton.

There are no real good maps of this area, so we'll do the best that we can with Google Maps. The small trail section that is just west of Unger Lake is worth a drive. The trails in this area are probably the best you'll see all day. Don't be in a hurry to leave this area. There are numerous small, sandy hills, off-camber narrow trails, and lots of trees. We never could find the route to take us to Unger Lake, but at one point we could see the lake through the trees. We were kind of rushing at this point because we thought there were better trails to the north. When you're ready to leave, you can take Whitmere Road north and it will turn into a two-track. Follow this two-track to Brunswick Road and then take Linderman Road which is another two-track. This set of trails is really boring. Just dusty trails with northing really good to look at. Just use them as a way to get north.

Once you get to Skeels Road go east until you get to 108th Street. Watch the road, the sign is hidden pretty well. From here, the trail gets a little better. You'll pass a country cemetery on Windston Road that looks a little out of place. Still, kind of an interesting place to go through, but I wouldn't want to stay :)

Once you get to 184th Ave and turn south you'll pass by the parking area for the CCC trail. Continue south about a half mile more and you'll see Horseshoe Lake. This is a great photo spot. The trail is really nice through this area. It isn't challenging, but it is very pretty. Take your time going through this section and enjoy the scenery. You'll evetually end up on a paved road and you can take the road north to another trail. This is where we ran across a dead tree that had fallen across the trail. We took the opportunity to move the tree so the trail would be open.

Here are some pictures of our day on the trails. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for other trails we should've checked out.

The following few pictures show the first part of the trail that is near Unger Lake - very pretty trail area.

While on the trail, we can to an area where a tree had broken and was laying across the trail. This probably wasn't the smartest thing we did all day, but we wanted to continue on the trail. The limb appeared to be barely hanging onto the tree so I would imagine that by the time someone visits this trail, the tree will be down (probably laying across the trail).

We worked together so that one held the tree limb up while the other drove under.

These pictures were taken near Horseshoe Lake. This is a really nice area. The pictures don't do justice to it.

This is the tree that we came upon while on the last part of the trail above Horseshoe Lake. It took a couple of tugs, but now the tree is laying safely to one side of the trail.

Before we called it a day, we went after a geocache. These canisters are pretty typical of the geocaches. This one took us a little while to find because the GPS wouldn't pick up a signal under the trees. We probably walked right by the cache three times. I won't tell where it's it.

That's it for our trip to the Horseshoe Trails area. It's never a bad day when you're out in your Jeep exploring the trails with family and friends.