From the North Union Street trailhead, the Blue Trail is a mowed lane that cuts north across a field and within 250 yards reaches a spur. Head right briefly for your first view of the River Raisin. The river flows 139 miles through six Michigan counties and even a portion of Fulton County in Ohio before emptying in Lake Erie. Here the Raisin appears as a dark, slow meandering waterway.

From the spur the Blue Trail remains in open fields, quickly passing a junction with the Red Trail at post No. 1 at Mile 0.3 and then the return of the Blue Trail at post No. 2.  Stay right on the Blue Trail to enter the woods and skirt a floodplain forest. After post No. 3 you’ll spot the River Raisin again from a low bluff.

At post No. 4, marking a junction with the Green Trail, the Blue Trail enters the open field of the North Prairie. This 10-acre, dry-mesic prairie remnant features grasses that are often more than five feet high by autumn, providing cover for a variety of grassland nesting birds. At Mile 0.9 you arrive at an old farm lane where to the right a short spur leads to your final view of the River Raisin.

The main trail heads left, weaving in and out of the forest and passing post No. 5 at the west end of the Green Trail. At Mile 1.5 you reach post No. 6 at the junction with the Yellow Trail. Here the Blue Trail heads east (left) for post No. 2 and can be followed to return to the trailhead and shorten the hike to 2 miles.

The Yellow Trail is the right-hand fork that dips in and out of a kettle depression and then climbs a hill. The descent on the back side ends at post No. 7, marking the junction with another Green Trail that can be used as a crossover spur. The Yellow Trail continues its westerly direction to climb another hill before swinging east and merging onto an old farm lane to arrive at post No. 9 at Mile 2.2.

To the south the Red Trail forms a 0.8-mile loop through the Beaudoin Prairie, named after the family who sold the 32-acre addition to The Nature Conservancy in 2005. The Beaudoin tract is a unique dry sand prairie covering the western half of a 1000-foot hill to provide excelling viewing point to the west. The Red Trail skirts the base of the hill and then climbs it, passing a spur to a viewing point at the top.

You return to post No. 9 at Mile 3 and continue north on the Red Trail, most of it through open fields, before reaching post No. 1 and the Blue Trail at Mile 3.5. Backtrack the first leg of the hike to return to North Union Street parking lot at Mile 3.7.