Discover Detroit's Best Fall Hike: Pinckney's Crooked Lake Trail
- Dan Cooke
- Oct 26, 2023
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 12
The wait is over - Detroit's peak fall colors have FINALLY ARRIVED throughout the region, and there's no better trail to experience this season's beauty than along Pinckney Recreation Area's Crooked Lake Trail.
As rapper E-40 so eloquently stated, "Everybody got choices."
For Detroit's outdoor community, that simple sentence couldn't be more true for the month of October. Scratch that, the last two weeks of October. When our trails are brilliantly decorated in reds, yellows, and oranges. A fleeting, stunningly-gorgeous period where one can reasonably become recreationally paralyzed by the choice of whether to go for a run, paddle, bike, or hunt. Especially on a bluebird day.
I found myself with such choices this past Monday. As I finished up my morning office work (yes, we in the outdoor industry do still have indoor offices), I recognized the recreational conundrum that lay before me. Every prediction software at my disposable gave the green light for every activity. My "Plan A" was to head to the deer stand, but man...a quick glance out the window showed that peak fall colors, at long last, had arrived. And, as any long-time Michigander knows, those colors could be gone in a matter of weeks - sometimes days if the winds pick up.
Armed with recently-obtained knowledge regarding the Detroit area's 5 best trails for experiencing fall colors, I made a calculated choice to bail on the stand for Pinckney Recreation Area's Crooked Lake Trail. The #1 destination within an hour's drive of Downtown Detroit for inundating your hike with autumn's stunning ambience. A baptism of seasonal color. The type of click-bait destination that outdoor influencers dream of.
With the afternoon's trail selected, my GoPro fully-charged, and a weighted rucking vest loaded up, all that was left to do was hit the road and pray that my gamble would pay off. Despite my excitement, this recreational choice represented a gamble - a zero-sum situation where choosing to hike meant foregoing the hunt. With October's bounty of outdoor opportunity, there was a decent likelihood that I could end up regretting this choice.
Fast forward an hour or so, I'm a few miles into the Crooked Lake Trail - mesmerized by my surroundings. The entire scene is bathed in golden light, both from the vibrant yellow leaves of the park's hickory trees and the late afternoon sun. My camera is pleading for mercy after its overuse while trying to capture the scene. Eventually I give up on it, surrendering to the realization that moments like this, in places like this, can only be fully-experienced in the moment.
"This...this was the right choice."
It is our privilege to reintroduce Pinckney State Recreation Area and its Crooked Lake Trail now.
MEET PINCKNEY STATE RECREATION AREA
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