In a couple of days we’ll be leaving to spend some time in Michigan. I will have no access to cell phones, or a computer. Soooo…, to keep people busy, or maybe as a desperate plea for help, I’m asking somebody to find me while I’m up there. I figure that if you get to the nearest station on the railroad that once ran there, you’ll have done well enough.
We’ll be heading to a county in Lower Michigan that currently has no rail service whatsoever. If you drop in to the Depot Diner (page 792), you will find a clue as to where to look. At one point this county was served by a standard-gauge line (which eventually became part of the Pere Marquette) and a narrow-gauge line (which connected to nothing else and was eventually abandoned). I will probably be biking through towns that were answers to two of my recent “where is it?” threads on my trip to the cottage in this county.
The town (settlement?) you’re looking for is a former junction on the PM. It lost its status as a junction in the 1920s, and just became a sharp curve on the line. Continue north (or is it east?), and you’ll eventually wind up at the county seat. Go back south, and the next station became famous for artificial gems and being the biennial host of the county’s (look out, Mookie!) Asparagus Festival. Between the two towns (sort of–but not along the old railroad) is a relatively unusual type of transportation enjoyed by generations of tourists in the area.
You’ll need a fairly detailed map of the state to show this community–it’s not on any main highway. But it shows up fairly prominently in the appropriate SPV railroad atlas, and would also appear on most PM maps–especially before its status as a junction was lost.
We leave Tuesday–will you have figured it out by then? Or will I return on Saturday without anyone finding us?
Good luck!