Here is something I haven’t done often on the trail, write in the morning! Every night of a hiking trip is special in some way, the first couple nights are especially special. Day 1 is kind of like a one night stand, you’re just excited to be somewhere, blinded by instinctual enthusiasm to the point where you don’t care what happens as long as it’s happening to you.
Morning after is the real barometer. If the first thought you have is, “what the hell did I just do?” Then you need to go home, take a shower, and try to find a new passion. If you wake up and feel like you’re ready for many days in a row of the same thing, then hiking might just be for you. I was talking about hiking, not one nights stands. Get your head out of the gutter.
Evening thoughts:
Today was beautifully bitchtastic. We worked for every inch of the 12 miles we hiked today. Sections of the trail were straight vertical, others had foot deep mud, and a few of the middle miles weren’t really a trail at all. If it wasn’t for the blue blazed trees to mark the trail, we would have had no clue where to go or where we were. On one hand, it slows the pace down to a mile an hour. On the other hand, it’s good experience to what we will experience in many sections of other long trails.
My favorite parts of today were the waterfalls, there were about six of them? We ate lunch at a waterfall and took two of our frequent breaks at waterfalls. If other trails are famous for mountains, NCT in northern Michigan should be famous for waterfalls. There were so many waterfalls on the map that I made the comment, “trails should be easy today, probably have pristine trail maintenance for all the people to see the waterfalls.” Except for a mile towards the end, at Manobenzo falls, I could not have been more wrong.
Tonight we camp on the Lake Superior shore. The end of the hike wore on forever and we were more than ready to setup camp and get dinner into our mouths. Honestly, I don’t even think we are camped at the correct camp site. Hopefully no one wakes us up and tells us to move in the middle of the night. It’s a dark quarter moon with an overcast. Fingers crossed.