Located in Antrim County near Belaire, MI lies a quiet preserve called the Grass River Natural Area. With 7.5 miles of trails stretching throughout the preserve, there is plenty to explore. Once you pull into the driveway/road, you will continue down the road a little less than a mile and then you will see the main parking lot to your left. There are a few other spots along the road where you can pull off or park to access other trails more easily, but it just depends on what you want to do. I have not hiked those trails yet, so I do not know what they have to offer, but if they are anything like the other trails, they are very nice and have a lot to see and experience.

Grass River Visitor Center

Information Sign

Once you park, there are several different informational signs including maps that will help you figure out what trails you want to go down as well as show you some of the surrounding lakes, as the Grass River is part of the “Chain of Lakes Water Trail” which flows all the way out into the Grand Traverse Bay. If you go to the large information sign next to the main trail, you can see the Grass River Visitor Center. I highly suggest going into the visitor center and looking around at their large fur collection of native Michigan mammals as well as the other informational aspects of the preserve. Out of all the places I have been to, I think their visitor center has some of the best interactive displays I have seen. After you spend some time at the visitor center, I recommend making your way over to the part of the map that is labeled “Cabin” and then do the Sedge Meadow Boardwalk Loop as well as the Fern Boardwalk Loop. These two loops are two of the shortest hikes that you could do here, but in my opinion, they have the most to offer.

The Sedge Meadow Boardwalk Loop is about .8 miles and will take you right up to the Grass River where you can see people boating, kayaking, or canoeing between Clam Lake and Lake Belaire. You can also see several different birds flying or swimming around the river such as red-winged blackbirds, eastern kingbirds, swamp sparrows, mallard ducks, cedar waxwings, and occasionally even a common loon. Before you get to the river, you have to walk through a white cedar wetland which offers a cool environment to walk through and you can even find some cool critters running around like chipmunks, an occasional mink or long-tailed weasel, muskrats, and many others. Once you get to the northern part of the trail, if you look close enough, you can find carnivorous plants called pitcher plants. These are one of the only types of carnivorous plants that you can find in Michigan, so the fact that you can find them here is really cool. The Fern Boardwalk Loop is a little less than .5 miles and offers similar scenery to the Sedge Meadow Boardwalk Loop, but you can sometimes find a few different types of animals while walking this loop. Again, this is part of a white cedar wetland, so it is primarily dominated by white cedar trees. The Woodland Loop is also a nice trail that provides a little bit of a change of scenery, but it is still similar to the other two trails.

Pitcher Plant

If you have never been here before, I highly recommend using the maps around the trails as much as you can or need to. If you do not like using those kinds of maps or have problems understanding them, I would make sure you try to use AllTrails so that you go to the places you wanted to check out.