Most Mullett Lake homeowners think of the North Central State Trail as something out-of-town cyclists use to reach Mackinaw City. That framing sells the trail short. Between Indian River and Cheboygan, the crushed limestone path pulls close enough to the water that it functions as Topinabee's second main street, connecting the beach, the depot library, the deli, and two of the lake's better patios without asking anyone to get in a car. If you already live here, the interesting question is not whether the trail is scenic. It is why so few residents use it the way it was rebuilt to be used.
The geography most guides get wrong
Trail guides love to describe the North Central State Trail as a 62-mile ride from Gaylord to Mackinaw City. From a Mullett Lake porch, the number that matters is smaller. The trail parallels the lake's western shoreline for 10 miles, sometimes right at the water's edge and sometimes with a narrow strand of cabins, private beaches, and docks between the trail and the lake, with rest stops at Topinabee 5.6 miles from Indian River and at Mullett Village 6.6 miles beyond Topinabee. North of Topinabee the trail continues for six miles along Mullet Lake, at times directly adjacent to the water and at other times routed behind historic resort communities.
That routing is unusual. Rail trails typically run behind everything. This one runs through the front yard. Rails to Trails Conservancy named it one of the top five autumn destinations in the country in 2008, largely because for almost eight miles north of Indian River the trail hugs the west shore of Mullett Lake, with the fifth largest lake in Michigan on one side and stands of hardwoods on the other creating a colorful barrier from M-27.
Which means the practical asset for a resident is not the whole 62 miles. It is the six to eight miles you can access from your own dock.
What's actually open this season
The Topinabee business core is small, and it has turned over enough in the past two years that even year-round residents lose track. Here is where things stand now.
Cafe Noka
Cafe Noka has been a popular destination since 1994 for local residents and visitors, including campers, snowmobilers, and ice fishermen, and it was purchased by Marrijo Beckmann in 2024, who now serves dinner in addition to the long-running breakfast and lunch offerings. The exterior recently got a colorful make-over, and warm-weather dog-friendly outdoor seating faces Mullett Lake just south of the Topinabee library.
The dinner shift is the news. For thirty years this was a daytime cafe. If your evening routine has always meant driving to Indian River or Cheboygan, the calculus has changed.
Breakers Bar and Grill
Locally regarded as the on-the-water option in town. Owner Derek Schittekat has overseen extensive interior and exterior renovations over several years, and the outside patio offers a Mullett Lake view on warm summer evenings.
Topinabee Market and Deli
The everyday grocery stop. The market sits across from Topinabee Park in downtown Topinabee on Old 27 and the North Central State Trail, adjacent to the library, with year-round restrooms, a picnic shelter, and interpretive signs at the park. Bike up, load a backpack, ride home. That is the loop the trail was rebuilt to make possible.
Beauty Hardware Company
Worth flagging because the address changed. The salon formerly known as The Topinabee Hair and Nail salon is now The Beauty Hardware Company and has relocated to 1465 North Straits Highway, the former Topinabee Hardware location owned by Louie, with the same staff and service.
Two parks, two different weekends
Topinabee has two public parks within walking distance of each other, and residents tend to use only one of them.
Topinabee Beach Park is the postcard. Located directly on the North Central State Trail with roughly 400 feet of Mullett Lake frontage, it includes grills, benches, picnic tables with umbrellas, a fountain, a dog waste station, a small bathing beach, a children's play structure, and day-use docks for boaters and swimmers. Day-use docks are the detail most residents forget. You can arrive by boat, tie up, and walk the trail into town for lunch without hauling a car around the west shore.
Boy Scout Park is the one locals underuse. The five-acre park at 5212 Lea Street contains a ball field, picnic areas, grills, benches, a bike rack, a playground, tennis court, and the historical schoolhouse landmark building. If the beach is crowded on a hot Saturday, this is where you go for a quiet grill.
The events that still shape the calendar
There are exactly three community events most Mullett Lake residents plan around, and they cluster in a narrow window.
- Topinabee SummerFair & Market. A family-friendly day of food, music, and a local market sponsored by the Topinabee Development Association, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
- Annual Topinabee Fire Department BBQ. A fixture on the township event calendar published by Mullett Township, alongside SummerFair and the winter Topinabee Holiday Festival.
- Topinabee Holiday Festival. The bookend on the other side of the year, also on the township calendar.
Two of those three run out of the same three-block core that the trail passes through. If you time an afternoon ride around them, you are not doing a separate errand.
Something quietly working on the fishery
This one rarely makes it into a resident newsletter, but it changes what late-summer evenings on the water are actually like. The Mullett Lake Area Preservation Society has worked with the DNR, the Sault Tribe, and area businesses to improve fishing on the lake, contributing $30,000 to drive fish plantings, with more than 650,000 walleye fingerlings and 1,500 six-to-eight-inch walleye planted over a three-year period. More than 7,000 sturgeon fingerlings were planted in the Pigeon River, a tributary of Mullett Lake, with additional sturgeon planned for the lake itself, and Michigan State University and the DNR have studied the success of these plantings.
If you have owned here for a decade and felt the walleye fishing shift, that is why. The numbers are large enough to matter and quiet enough that most casual anglers never hear about them.
Riding the trail before the color goes
The Topinabee segment is one of the last places in the region where the fall color window is genuinely different depending on which mile you ride. The southern end near Indian River peaks earlier because the trail crosses the Indian River spread and opens into wetland canopy. The middle miles, where the trail sits within a few feet of the shoreline, hold color longer because the lake moderates the overnight temperature.
The Topinabee stretch offers a public beach, park, playground, parking, restrooms, and a library housed inside an old railroad depot, and Indian River adds restrooms, a market, covered picnic tables, a playground, and a train depot repurposed into a boutique. Two depots, two libraries or shops in them, one trail. That is the kind of density that makes a slow ride worthwhile even when you have lived here for years.
A working local itinerary, if you want one:
- Coffee at Cafe Noka, sitting outside if the dog is with you.
- Ride south from the Topinabee trailhead toward the Indian River spread, about 5.6 miles.
- Turn around, come back, grab something for the grill at Topinabee Market and Deli.
- Walk to Boy Scout Park if the beach is packed, or drop into Topinabee Beach Park if it isn't.
- Dinner on the patio at Breakers.
None of that requires driving. That is the point most guides miss.
The thing worth remembering
Mullett Lake is part of the Inland Waterway, by which one can boat 38 miles from Crooked Lake and Round Lake near Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan across the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula to Cheboygan on Lake Huron, along what was a Native American trade route later opened to small steamer and modern recreational traffic. The water route is the famous one. The parallel land route, the one running along the same shore on crushed limestone, is younger and less used, and it belongs mostly to the people who live along it.
If you have been here long enough to have a favorite bend in the trail, you already knew half of this. If you are still figuring out which weekend routine fits, borrow the itinerary above and adjust from there.
When you are ready to talk about your own stretch of shoreline, whether that means understanding what your property is worth today or thinking through a future move on the lake, Coldwell Banker Fairbairn Realty has been working these waters since long before the trail was rebuilt. Request a free home valuation and we will bring the local read that a portal estimate cannot.
