I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but this somehow became the summer of trees for 
The park is actually pretty massive and the old growth trail that we walked this past Saturday morning is just a small portion of the entire park. However, it was well worth it and I will be including this as a #wednesdaywalk post sponsored by 
There is a visitor center for the park, but they were in the process of renovating that area, so that whole section of the park was closed down. Luckily, you can still access the trails from the day-use area and the logging museum. We drove from our campsite back to where the day-use area was (yes, it was that far), and got ready to start our hike. Thankfully, the old growth trail is fully paved, so we didn't have to deal with all the roots and rocks like we had when we went hiking in the upper peninsula a few weekends ago.
I wasn't really sure what to expect because I haven't visited this part of the park since I was a little kid and I couldn't really remember a lot of stuff from my previous trips. There were bits and pieces I remembered, but nothing really cohesive. The pine trees here are massive as you might expect given the name of the park.
Sadly, there was a massive late winter storm earlier this year that dumped a whole bunch of ice on a large portion of the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. Hartwick Pines was not immune to the destruction as you will see in the following photos. It actually looked like a bit of a warzone.
These trees grow so tall that the canopy often blocks much of the sunlight from reaching the lower part of the tree. It's a process that is called "self pruning" according to Google. What happened earlier this year is the ice started to accumulate on the upper branches of the tree. The weight of the ice caused many of the trees to bend over at certain spots lower on the trunk. Some of them made it through and others snapped like a twig as you can see from the photos.
This damage happened at parks and properties all across the northern part of the state. There were some communities that were without power for weeks an the clean up efforts are actually still ongoing close to six months later.
A short distance down the trail and up a hill from the day-use area is the Chapel in the Pines. This is one of the few things I remember from my visit as a kid. I thought they left this open, but the doors were closed when we visited. I tried to channel a bit of 
You can rent the chapel out for things like weddings and stuff, but it only seats about 18 people and they have a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't do in the chapel.
Instead, we continued along the trail towards the logging museum. The logging museum is actually over by the visitors center, so we were kind of going backwards on the trail if you want to be technical about it. They have signs like you see above as well as numbered points of interest along the trail. I'll be covering the logging museum in a future post.
It's crazy to think that the majority of my home state used to look like this forest back in the day. As much as I love modern conveniences, it would have been cool to explore Michigan back when it was pristine. We still have a lot of protected areas, but not like when the entire state was covered in forest.
The aftermath of the ice storm continued to be evident as we made our way along the rest of the walk. Eventually, we made our way to where "The Monarch" once stood.
The Monarch was once the tallest tree in Hartwick Pines State Park clocking in at 155 feet tall. In 1992 the tree lost the top 35 feet after a storm and unfortunately, it died four years later. Many people remember visiting The Monarch as kids and trying to wrap their arms around the tree. It had a circumference of 12 feet and it was estimated to be about 325 years old.
It's all cyclical though and when the monarch died, it created an opening in the forest canopy that allowed sunlight in to boost the growth in other trees perhaps creating a new monarch one day. This phenomenon is likely happening all over the park (and state) after that ice storm.
It's hard to guess just how many people have visited Hartwick Pines State Park over the years, but if you happen to be in the area and you are looking for a nice stroll in an old growth forest, this mile and a half (or so) path is pretty amazing. I'm really glad I got to share this piece of history with
My Sports Account - @bozz.sports
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or