Mesick Mushroom Festival Glow Run (Mesick - 2022 - 5K)
Mesick Mushroom Festival Glow Run Photos
206 Mile Drive (With Interlochen)
Registration:
The Mesick Mushroom Glow Run's online registration page through RunSignUp was very brief in its race information. There was a great two sentence description about the trail run’s location. A link was provided with more information on the 5K run and Mesick Mushroom Festival.
The linked website stated walkers may find morel mushrooms along the
course that they were welcome to pick! The
5K had great rates for kids. I made the
mistake of not registering Luke to run. Anyone
18 and under could run for $15.00. I
love runs with discounted kid rates. I
was so excited to go back up north and run along the Manistee River on
campground trails.
Packet Pick-Up was
on the basketball court of the Northern Exposure Campground. There were two picnic tables set up, one was
check-in and one was loaded with pre-packaged Jack Rabbit bags. It was a beautiful area. I could see a large forest across the
Manistee River. Packet pick-up was feet
away from the beach.
Course:
The course had a loopy path that repeated itself for a short portion. After starting we took a left turn into the woods and made a large circle that led us back near the start which could be seen through thin trees on the right.
We passed our first left turn into the woods,
but the second time, continued along the river through the campground on a
paved road. There were so many people
sitting on foldable chairs around fire pits watching participants.
We made another left turn down another paved road that took us to a trail on the outskirts of the campground running parallel to Hodenpyle Dam Road. The trail was narrow with a lot of tree roots.
Every root was very well marked with different colors of bright spray paint.
The sun
setting made the run absolutely beautiful with great sun rays beaming through tree
branches.
I can’t decide what part of the course I enjoyed more, the times I was next to the Manistee River or the trail run with bright sun rays and soft therapeutic dirt. I always felt close to the campground while on the trail.
Most of the time I could see campers through the trees and hear people laughing and talking. It was not the scary "bear ridden" northern Michigan trail run I had panicked about moments before starting.
I finished before the sun completely
set.
There was a 2K walk without
repeated course areas. The 2K path did
not include the northeast part of the course and therefore had less
trails.
The 5K course had elevation changes frequently. It was not a flat course. Ironically, the flattest parts of the course were the trail areas in the woods.
The paved streets through the campground went up and down often. There were no lights put out for night time guidance but all walkers finished before it was completely dark.
Every turn on the course had
volunteers, most were young kids having fun with foam sticks or sitting on
truck beds enjoying the night.
I love the Manistee National
Forest. It’s a huge dense beautiful home
to an immense variety of Michigan wildlife.
Swag:
I received a bright
orange Mesick Mushroom Glow Run t-shirt. I only
have a handful of bright orange running shirts.
It had a hilarious logo, “We don’t sweat, we glow.” I got a red, white and blue Road ID bib, two
glow bracelets, a rubber glow bracelet and an ERG cinnamon raisin energy bar in my packet pick-up bag.
There was a raffle
for participants that were present before the awards ceremony. They had multiple gift baskets and a few
giant water canteens. The gift baskets
were wrapped up really nice in a beautiful presentation.
Restrooms:
There was a
campground bathroom next to the basketball court. The bathroom was in a brick building that
resembled a shed with a green roof. It
didn’t have line when I used it. It was
convenient and clean for what was essentially an upgraded outhouse.
Food:
There was a picnic table with Dasani water bottles, bags of apples, bananas and assorted flavors of ERG energy bars.
On a second picnic
table there was a nice wooden basket with apples, bananas and huge
tangerines. I took a tangerine, Dasani
water and peanut butter chocolate chunk ERG Bar. All ERG bars were gluten free so I gave mine
to Luke to try. Unfortunately, he wasn’t
a huge fan. He said the texture was too
crunchy. I am not a fan of Dasani
water. It tastes different from all
other bottled waters to me.
Awards:
There was a nice awards ceremony held at the park pavilion after all participants had finished. They had beautiful wooden medals with morel mushrooms stamped on them. The lanyards were made from Jute Twine.
Their two overall male and female wood statues looked like something out
of Stranger Things. They were runners
with human bodies and morel mushrooms as heads with evergreen trees at their
feet. They looked naked which made it
more hilarious. I loved that the
mushroom people trophies had “Mesick Mushroom Festival Glow Run 5K 2022.” The festival and city name added to the
engraving on the overall trophies was great.
Putting all the words on the body made the nudeness of the mushroom
people less noticeable.
Age groups were three
deep in five-year increments. I was
shocked to place first with my slower than normal 5K time. It was my, “I ran three 5K’s in 24 hours running
on fumes time.” The second-place woman
in my age group was equally as surprised to win an age group award by the comments she made about her time while walking up to get her medal.
I saw a lot of awards go kids, older runners and the American flag carrying squad. It was a great ceremony with a lot of deserving winners.
I love my natural wooden morel mushroom medal. It's smaller size makes it unique. I have no issue with small medals. Smaller medals are cute and easier to carry.
Aide Stations:
There were no aide stations on the 5K and 2K courses. We ran by an ice container in the last mile a real desperate runner could have taken a scoop from.
The course looped close
to the start and finish multiple times if anyone needed to stop and get
water. Being that we were so frequently
near campers, if any participant starting feeling heat stroke symptoms, I’m
sure a random camper would have gladly given them a glass of water. With that said, I think running events should
have at least one aide station per 5K distance.
At least there were water bottles at the finish for everyone.
Timing:
Epic Timing was the timing company for the Mesick Mushroom Festival Glow Run. On Epic’s website they state,
“We are the calm in the chaos of race day.”
That’s a great way to think of a timing company, as timing companies are one of the most important aspects of competitive racing.
I didn’t know Epic Timing did events in Indiana, Illinois and as far east as Washington D.C. Epic Timing prides themselves on fast and accurate results and comes prepared with multiple backup systems in place incase technology has issues. I like Epic Timing's big blow-up arches and bright orange cone finish chutes.
Luke ran parallel to me on the beach as I came up to the finish line and I got some epic shots of him.
City Notes:
Mesick is known as Michigan’s mushroom capital and the Mushroom Capital of the U.S. It boasts a big title for a small village of
only 397. (2020 Census) Boyne City, 84
miles north of Mesick started its mushroom festival just one year after Mesick’s began 62 years ago and also claims to be the Mushroom Capital of the United States. There are other cities across the
country that have claimed the title including the very worthy, Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania.
Mesick has a
beautiful location bordered on the west by the Manistee River. The Manistee River opens up in to the
Hodenpyl Dam Pond in Mesick before continuing south past Yuma, Michigan. Mesick is 11 miles northwest of the highest
elevation point (Briar Hill, 1,706 feet) in all of Michigan's lower peninsula.
Every Mother’s Day
weekend Mesick has its annual Mushroom Festival. The festival includes a carnival, huge craft
fair next to the carnival, grand parade, car show, 5K run, morel hunting
contests and more.
Morel mushrooms are
extremely unique looking and easy to identify, but grow in very specific
climates and forests making them a challenge to find. They favor certain types of trees, recently
burned land, disturbed ground and moist soil that is not too warm or
cold. Growing conditions for morel
mushrooms must be just right. Some morel
mushroom hunters have timing down so specifically they measure the size of tree
leaves before going on a hunt. Successful
morel mushroom hunting requires a great knowledge base and skill.
I liked the Mesick
bulldogs school mascot. My middle school
mascot was the bulldog. Mesick High School had an awesome location behind downtown businesses and across the street
from the Mesick water tower. The school building had no
windows facing the main road entrance. Maybe it was just the gym that was built next to the road. It was an odd placement with the school’s entrance
around the back. It didn’t have a great road appearance.
I loved the Mushroom Cap Motel on Mesick Avenue.
Bucksnort was a hilarious name for a local bar.
I
found a mural in downtown Mesick and a video rental store still in business! There was a log cabin restaurant, Common
Grounds Kitchen and Tap, with amazing outdoor patio lights that lit up the end
of the bridge over the railway downtown.
The tiny “Brew-Ha” coffee shop also had a stellar name. There were a handful of unique small town
businesses that can only be found in Mesick, Michigan.
City Sign:
It’s more of
a challenge to find city signs at night.
I had seen the larger Mesick village sign on the way up to Interlochen
in the morning. It faces a turnaround
and is located in front of a BP Gas Station.
It is the main Mesick welcome sign coming in from 115 and N 13. The sign is a huge boulder with “Mesick Est.
1890” carved into it. On either side of
the massive stone were two morel mushrooms carved out of wood. Each morel stood about three feet tall. We found a green basket with morel mushrooms
in it on the ground near the Mesick village sign. I wish I knew the story behind them. We left them incase someone was coming back.
The second Mesick welcome
sign we found was on 115 on the way to the run at Northern Exposure
Campground. It was a very tall sign with
all the classic endorsements and a separate a nicely painted “Welcome to
Mesick” sign with the Manistee River and evergreens. There was an eight foot morel mushroom sign
that said, “Mesick, the Mushroom Capital, Welcome.” Although the flash made it look like there
was still a bunch of light, I was standing 50 feet from the car in pitch black. I joked standing in the thick pine trees that ….something could be lurking
behind me.
…I made it back to
the car unscathed.
Other Awesomeness:
It seemed almost meant to be when I came across a morel mushroom hunt on Facebook at the beginning of April. Five painted concrete morel mushrooms were to be hidden in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. The hunt officially started on our May 1st, our wedding anniversary.
A new clue would be given each day for 30 days. Each new clue would be more helpful. By day thirty the exact location of each of the five mushrooms would be certain for anyone following the clues.
I’ve
always wanted to do a scavenger hunt, and with my growing knowledge of Michigan,
I really wanted to find the morel hidden on home ground.
There were seven clues released before our trip up
north to Mesick and Interlochen. I had
pinned down a nature preserve in East Jordan, Michigan and hour and a half
north of Mesick. With Interlochen’s 5K
starting at 9:00am and Mesick’s at 7:30pm we would have the entire afternoon to
drive up to East Jordan and search for the mushroom.
I forgot to mention each mushroom was worth $2,000, if found.
We made it to the Cosner Preserve just minutes after noon. It was a small half mile circle trail from its entrance off M-66. Ticks were not as prevalent as they are in southern Michigan. We still sprayed out of caution because ticks are nasty little stealth beasts.
We
found plants that closely resembled the plants in the clue picture we were
given but no morel anywhere in the Cosner Preserve.
We went to Rogers Family Homestead Nature Preserve followed by the Lake Charlevoix Watershed and lastly, East Jordan Community Park.
As we left the park Jason remembered the clue about the manhole manufacturing factory. We both knew it was in Elmira, but thought we were close enough to it in East Jordan. East Jordan and Elmira are 18 miles from each other.
We decided to drive to Elmira to continue our
search feeling as though we had covered all necessary ground in East
Jordan.
The most profound site in the unincorporated community of Elmira, Michigan is the East Jordan Foundry that rests on 200 acres of northern Michigan paradise. The factory opened in November of 2018 providing 340 new jobs. The East Jordan Foundry recycles 500,000 pounds of scrap metal a day in special furnaces that hold 10 metric tons. The metal is melted down in just 10 minutes! The facility manufactures manhole covers and drain grates, among other things.
The factory is an eye-catching landmark in a
vast field of forests. The five smoke
stacks and rectangular building resemble a towering castle over the
countryside. Part of me doesn’t want to
like the building. Large factories in
nature bother me because I have a lack of trust that chemicals and harmful waste
products won’t be carelessly put into water run-off or woodland areas. I hope that’s not the case in Elmira. Manhole covers and drain grate products are
important to produce.
(https://www.ejco.com/am/en/resource-center/video/new-east-jordan-foundry)
When we got to Elmira we were starving after hours of hiking in East Jordan. We stopped at a gas station Subway and Railside Bar and Grill in downtown Elmira. A very nice woman at Railside took our order for Luke over the phone and told us all about their famous potato burger.
Jason won three balls out of a crane machine inside
Railside Bar and Grille while we waited for Luke’s burger. I wouldn’t call the potato burger as world
famous as they claimed, but the staff and atmosphere of the restaurant were
world famous.
We sat in the BP parking lot eating lunch staring at the towering EJ Foundry factory debating where our next morel search should take place. We went over the clues a dozen times. After checking some short trail paths off Elmira roads, we decided to drive to Deadman’s Outlook.
Hiking the surrounding trails and reaching Deadman’s Outlook was amazing.
The only
thing that could have made it better would have been staring out into the Jordan
River Valley in Autumn with miles of bright majestic Fall colors.
The story behind Deadman’s Overlook is a sad
one. There were many fatal logging
accidents that occurred on the hill including a well-known one that occurred in
1910. A soon to be married 21-year-old
man was killed driving a log truck down the steep slope. When you rest your arm on the two wood beams
and look over the valley you immediately sense the beauty and danger
intertwined in the landscape. I thought
about the man that died right there so many years ago.
Deadman’s Overlook proved to be even “hotter” when it came to vegetation from our clue picture. I saw the tiny white flowers we were missing in East Jordan. After a few more hours of searching I looked at the clock and saw it was time to go, otherwise I would miss the Mushroom Glow Run in Mesick. '
It was a real bummer knowing
we were so close to $2,000 and had we had more time, probably would have found
it. We debated staying overnight and
waiting for Sunday’s clue. On our way to
Mesick I thought more about the clues we had been given. Air Jordan shoes crossed my mind from the
“Air” clue but I quickly ruled it out. Thirty
minutes later the Facebook group posted that the Michigan mushroom had been
found 1.57 miles from the spot we had been searching. It was hidden off “Jordan” Valley Road. We didn’t think to pull off on the side of a main
road and look for it. We were so close.
It was amazing to go on the morel mushroom hunt. It was the first prize winning scavenger hunt for all of us. The kids really got into it to the point they were coming home from school anxious to be told the new clue of the day.
I loved
all the northern Michigan scenery we got to see hunting for the mushroom. The hunt took us to breathtaking nature areas that were new to all of us. It was an immersion
into northern Michigan wildlife that all five of us will never forget. The Jordan River is indeed a “lazy” river
great for laid back tubing and kayaking.
….and we still won $1,000 because I didn’t give up
after four other states were found. I locked down the morel mushroom hidden in…
MISSOURI!
That’s another insane and amazing story for another
blog. I will keep this story based in
Michigan.
I was pronouncing Mesick incorrectly until my
arrival to the village. I was saying
“Meh Sick” instead of “Me Sick”
…The name should have made it obvious.
I will forever pronounce it accurately using Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars as my help in its accurate pronunciation.
Mesick was not the first time I have mispronounced a
city name…
Pinconning (Pine-Cone-ing)
Charlotte (Char-Lit)
Gaylord (Gay-Lord)
I saw the Traverse City Track club at both Run for the Arts and the Mesick Festival Mushroom Glow Run. I wasn’t the only one that noticed the date, timing and distance of the two events from one another, but I was the only one that drove three and a half hours to get to them.
I was stopped by two women coming out from the campground bathroom in Mesick that recognized me from Interlochen. They said they recognized my purple ghost pants. It was awesome.
I love my glow-in-the-dark garage sale ghost
pants. Ironically, I bought them at a
garage sale in Marshall before we lived there.
I got a picture of the two women.
They were able to tell me about the course and relieve my irrational
fear of northern Michigan bears.
I saw a woman and man both running with American flags on
the mushroom glow run 5K course. I was
able to get a picture with the man. I have
immense respect for flag carriers. It’s one
of the big things I love about the Labor Day Mackinac Bridge Run.
Almost six months after running the Mesick Mushroom Festival Glow
Run I met a man noteworthy of mentioning in this blog post at a local coffee
shop, Serendipity, in Marshall. His name is
Gerry Bosserd. We started talking about
the drive he was taking up to Boyne City to walk the newly opened sky bridge at
sunset with his wife. I immediately felt
a connection. I frequently travel long distances
across the state just for an event that lasts a few hours. I thought his Friday evening plans were amazing.
https://www.mlive.com/news/2022/10/skybridge-michigan-sneak-peek-get-ready-for-the-sway.html
Talking about the Sky Bridge led into the Little Mac Foot Bridge
in Mesick. I learned about the Little
Mac after returning home from Mesick. I
am disappointed I didn’t do better research in advance. The next time I run near Mesick the family
and I are going to walk the Little Mac.
Gerald was one of the people on the designing committee for the Little
Mac Foot Bridge. He was at the ribbon
cutting ceremony with over 90 people from all over the state of Michigan.
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/michigan/little-mac-bridge-mi/
Gerry’s resume over the years is packed with amazing experiences but
it started in humble beginnings on a Michigan farm. Gerry served
in the army as a Environmental Engineer for five years. He was a Zone Engineer for the City of Saint
Ignace helping to build Brevort Lake, the largest artificial reef for walleye breeding. He told me the reef is so large it can be seen from Google Earth. He worked in Cadillac as a Facility Engineer
for the Manistee National Forest doing clean-up projects with the EPA. That particular position really resonated with
me. I love our state forests in Michigan
and want to see them continually preserved for decades to come. When Gerry started a construction business he
worked on building town halls and campgrounds all around the state including
the pavilion in Lowell, Michigan. Now Gerry
sells insurance and takes care of the family farm.
https://www.fishweb.com/maps/mackinac/brevoortlake/reef/index.html
I told Gerry I felt like I was meeting a Michigan
celebrity. He bought my hot chocolate
that morning. I asked to take a picture
with him before he left. It felt like
fate to meet a man that had helped design the Little Mac Foot Bridge in Mesick
the day Mesick’s blog was going live online.
Course Rating: 5 Stars
Post-Race Food Rating: 4.3
Stars
Swag Rating: 4.4 Stars
Awards Rating: 5 Stars
Race Execution: 5 Stars
Restroom Rating: 4.8 Stars
Aide Stations: 0 Stars
Timing
Company: 5 Stars
Post-Race Activities: N/A
Mushroom Glow Run Quote:
“I mushroom hunt because I have no morels.”
-
Unknown.
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