Day: June 14, 2020

I’ve been thinking about a couple terms thrown around the hiker world, “hiker legs” & “hiker hunger”.  

Hiker hunger is the idea that once you’ve been hiking for a few day or weeks straight, you can eat like a bottomless pit.  I put this to the test last night.  One of the things I haven’t seen referenced in hiker YouTube videos or books is what happens at 0330 the morning after your gorge out.  It’s a long lonely walk to the crapper, and what happens next is not something I will detail.

Hiker legs is the idea that once you’ve been hiking for a few days or weeks, your legs adjust and you can do 20-25 miles regularly.  We have found that our legs are never the things to get tired first, it’s our feet.  Maybe hiker feet would be a more appropriate term?  It makes me think that there really might be something more to the ultralight hiking gear.  Carry less weight, feet last longer and stay healthier, hike more miles.  Learn to carry the appropriate amount of water while also never letting a known water source pass you by in search of an unknown.  More thinking to be done on this.

The trail angel crew hung out and watched us eat our breakfast and get ready for the trail.  We said our goodbyes and got back to hiking around 0830.  For the first time on the trail, we didn’t have a goal to be anywhere at any specific time.  It’s true that we want to be finished on Monday, but there are only something like 42 miles left for any way we want to slice them.  Our intention was to hike slowly but probably end up with big miles.

Taking it slow today was easy.  We stopped at almost every river crossing, even had second coffee with a stroopwaffle.  The hiking a long day was a bit harder.  We took a pre-dinner break at a creek to cook dinner, refill water, and then eat when we felt ready.  Everything was prepped for hiking into the evening… until a really sweet camping spot presented itself around mile 15.  It was across from a pond that we didn’t feel like grabbing water from so we just dry camped it and called it a night.  Probably the quickest either of us have fallen asleep on the trail, the best we’ve ever slept as well.

We have happened upon a lot of wildlife in this 131 mile adventure.  Started out with some bears and yellow orioles fighting on the first day.  Today included a baby deer wandering in the weeds near our creek break and a Eastern Hognose snake hissed at me while I was filling water; nearly fell in the water and pissed myself.

There is one animal story I forgot to tell that is worth mentioning.  The day we were hiking into meet Shauna & Penny, Brianna got charged by a wild animal!  It happened so suddenly.  My first instinct was that she was about to get mauled by some rabid raccoon, hand when straight to me neck knife.  It took a couple of blinks but I eventually realized it was a bird, a very upset pheasant with two baby chicks.  If you have never been charged by a mama pheasant, it looks like a dilophosaurus from the Jurassic Park movie as it spits on Newman and eats him in the Jeep.  If you’ve never seen the Jurassic Park movie, just know it’s unsettling.  It eventually ran off to try and trick us into following it while the babies hid but we didn’t go for it.  We found the baby chicks and mixed them with Fritos for an early lunch… just kidding… we hiked on.

Today’s hike was a lot like the day from hell last Monday.  First half of the day was beautiful and ended with an extended bridge break where we soaked our feet and relaxed.  

The second half of the day was pretty shit.  Four miles through coastal wetlands just south of White Cloud.  Brianna picked up a new speed, “Mosquito Sprint”.  Brianna lead us through the bogs and marshes with great skill, keeping our feet dry until about 3/4 of the way through.  It was a cruel joke, trying to keep our feet dry when the trail eventually led to an area flooded up to our knees.  Wet feet, wet everything, mosquitos x 1,000,000.  We laughed, we cried, we continued on.  At least this time we were headed to an actual campsite, Twinwood Lake Campgrounds.

Twinwood is another remote USDA Manistee Forest campground, sporting a modest 5 campsites at $10 a night.  We are only ever marginally concerned with arriving to a site and finding no spots open.  If it’s happening to us, it’s happened to someone else.  Dollars to daisy’s there is a non-official dispersed campsite for us to use within a quarter to half mile.  Fortunately or unfortunately, 3 of the 5 sites were available for us to choose from.

More than ready to set camp and clean the mud off our shoes, we chose the site furthest away from the loud generator running backwoods folk.  The only thing louder than their generator was when they had to yell conversation to each other over the generator.  When the generator eventually turned off, we could finally hear their dog whining.  Careful what you wish for, huh?

Twinwood lake is a nice little body of water.  Remote lakes like this can have any number of big clean fish.  We saw quite a few trucks hauling in and out kayaks and fishing poles.  I chatted up one of the fisherman and he said it was a great lake for northern pike.  None of the banks looked suitable for shore fishing and the only non-mucky access was the one boat launch.  Refilling our water from the boat launch isn’t ideal for a lot of reasons but we really had no other option.  We did our best to use lake water for cooking and saved the old water for drinking.

Brianna made a beautiful feast this evening.  She layered the food in our coffee cups:  hot refried beans, pepper jack cheese chunks, hot beans & rice, with Frito toppers.  

Shoes and socks are drying over a small fire we created with partially burned logs.  It was a hard 17.5 mile day, only 9 left for tomorrow.