Day: August 22, 2020

We have arrived in Negaunee, Michigan! A six hour drive isn’t too bad when everyone has a chance to get out of work early, which we all did, and can arrive to the AirBnB by 7pm the night before a hiking trip begins. There is plenty of time left in the day to pop a couple of beers and pull everything out of our bags for final-final inspection.

Irons street in Negaunee is a very beautiful… ghost town. Our apartment sits above a closed bar, next to a closed night club, across the street from another closed bar. It feels like this town should be inviting and homie. I want to love it and tell everyone to come here because it’s a hidden gem of the north. All I can really do is hope these businesses survive through the next year or so, “Yooper Strong”. Most people won’t get this reference but this town reminds me of Stargate Universe season 2, episode 19, where the team arrived on a planned that was ravaged by deadly drone programmed to destroy all technology. We live in weird times.

Tomorrow finds three more hours of driving ahead of us. First, we have to “check-in” at the Porcupine mountain visitor center and pick up our camping permits for the two nights we are staying in the state park. The Porcupine Mountain State Park, also know as the “Porkies”, now requires all campers to reserve and use ONLY designated campsites. No dispersed camping, no first come, first serve. The cost is only $15 a night and the purpose is to prevent overcrowding and forest destruction. I don’t like having to make a stop at the visitor center to pick up our permits, but I get it, except for the part where we have to go to the visitor center instead of just printing them off ourselves.

After picking up the permits, we drop a car off to the first resupply spot and shoot over to the starting Trailhead. Day 1 is a 9 mile hiking day, max. Hiking over 9 miles would put us in the State park and that requires a permit, so we can’t push that far. Our permits are for specific locations on Sunday night and Monday night. If everything goes according to plan, tomorrow should be a smooth day. Hiking trips rarely go according to plan.

Day 1 was a flawless victory!  Almost.  Everything with picking up permits and dropping off vehicles went super smooth until a cop passed us coming the opposite direction and immediately flipped a bitch to get behind us.  Rick didn’t even pretend that he hadn’t done anything wrong, had the truck pulled over with the window down before the State Trooper had his lights on.  What could have been a ticket for 15 over turned into a warning when the trooper noticed a Marine issued rucksack in the back.  Rick is an Army guy, not a Marine, but it didn’t matter, military connections run deep.  I’m glad he didn’t ask if anyone else was in the service.  Knowing there was an Air Force guy in the backseat might have gotten him back into a ticket.

We arrived to the Trailhead around 11am central time, because we did cross out of Eastern for the first few days.  It wasn’t until 3/4 of a mile in that Rick looked back at me and said, “I know what I forgot, the paper map book.” 

I stopped walking. “That’s where our camping permits are.”

Rick dropped his pack. “Oh, I’ll run back and get it then.” 

Running back to get permits seems like such a simple thing, but it wasn’t.  Rick disappeared down the trail while Brianna, Shauna, and I plopped on the ground and took some weight off while we waited.  It had been about 20 or 30 minutes of waiting before a large family passed by us on the trail.  I asked if they had seen our hiking partner on their way up the trail and they said no, they had not seen anyone.  How could they have not seen anyone?  This made me worry enough to start a hike back search for him.

Rick wouldn’t intentionally go off trail.  He has more backcountry experience than the rest of us combined.  Is he lost?  Did he fall into the river?  I ran all the way back to the truck with no sign of him.  My brain was processing all the possible scenarios as I ran back to where the girls awaited my return.  Guess who was there waiting for me?  Rick.  He did go off trail.  To top it off, it sounds like he took some spills on his “shortcut”.  I’m not mad, just not something anyone should ever do.  One of us should have gone with him, that’s true too.  I promise no one else would have tried an off trail “shortcut” either.

The day was pretty smooth after that initial hiccup.  Rick is rather sore now, which doesn’t make me feel great about how the next few days might play out.  His pack is a heavy sack of rocks and that’s a challenge for a person without silly injuries.  

Tonight’s camp is next to the Black River, we are surrounded by the sounds of a wild river running.  Is it a good thing that we can’t hear any of the weird nighttime sounds of the forest?  Seems like all the noise makers are still out there…