Category: NCT

No breakfast.  No coffee.  On the count of three, we break down camp and hike out of here like yesterday didn’t happen.  I did filter out a couple bottles of muck water before we left, and they tasted as bad as drinking muck water sounds.  It’s amazing how much less water you need when camp consists of setting up and passing out.  In a normal camp, we are drinking water to hydrate, using it to cook food, coffee, and using it to clean our feet etc.  It ends up being about 8 liters, and then I still have to fill them back up before we start the hiking day.

The best plan we had to start the day was little more than hope meets wish.  We could see on the map that there was a small town after only 3 or 4 miles of hiking and that town had a Campground.

Our bodies were actually feeling pretty great after the shenanigans of yesterday.  Feet were dirty but shoes were dry.  It turns out, sometimes the trail blaze markers lead you through a knee deep bog and knee deep bogs can get a little water in your shoes.  We almost put our camp shoes on before walking through but didn’t.  It’s true what they say about trail runner shoes, they dry fast.

We arrived at the campground around 0730 and began looking at options.  The Campground website said they were not taking non-seasonal reservations but their Facebook page and Facebook messager had differing messages.  Brianna successfully reserved a cabin for the evening and we waited for something to happen.  The sign on the office door said, “if you have reservations, please go to your site and wait, we will be with you during business hours.” Perfect.  We sat at the picnic table for breakfast and coffee and waited.

It wasn’t that we couldn’t continue hiking that day, it was that we wanted a win and a break.  There was also the looming wind storm coming later in the evening that seemed likely to bring another miserable night.  

We must have waited until around noon before the Campground responded to our Facebook message.  They apologized for the differing communications, but they were not accepting reservations until Friday.  I tried to explain our situation: hikers seeking shelter, website already accepted our payment.  Our message went unread and we decided that all there was left to do was move on.  Actually, Brianna and I bickered about the situation and stewed silently for a while before I decided to use the campground’s bathroom to fill up our waters and we walked on.

New plan:  find a safe place in the woods to ride out a wind storm?  We were defeated, again.

We continued our road walk for about a half mile in silence.  I noticed a camper in a driveway that said “Vista Cruiser” on it so I jokingly said, “Brianna, look, it’s a Vista Cruiser!  You can literally Cruise the Vista!”  Which is a line from one of her favorite “That 70s Show” episodes.  Then, a lady popped her head out and said, “what’s that?”.  Embarrassed, I attempted to quickly exchange pleasantries and hike on, but she pressed more.

“Are you hikers?  Do you need anything?”  Brianna explained our situation and within the hour Laurie had offered us a bed in the Vista Cruiser to sleep on, full access to their lake, fishing boat, and she was also going to cook us burgers for dinner.  In exchange, all they really wanted was to hear our stories and to tell us theirs.  Laurie and Mike (her husband) even had their grand kids over at the time, Brianna tried to teach them Rummy and I lost a few games of war.

I’m filled with gratitude.  It amazes me how quickly the pendulum of chance can swing from one extreme to another.  

✅Jump in lake

✅Laundry

✅Shower

✅Drink beer

✅Eat Home Cookeed burger & brot 

✅Charge phone and batteries

✅Socialize with and trust complete strangers

I don’t usually talk this way, but here goes.  Thank you universe. (But mostly – Thank you Laurie & Mike got being the amazing Trail Angels that you are!!)

So thankful.  So filled with joy.  We slept through the wind storm in as safe a spot as there could be, the Vista Cruiser.  The AC in the trailer didn’t work so Brianna slept on the bed with her head near the open window and I put my sleeping mat on the floor next to the open door.  It probably won’t surprise you to hear that we woke up to home brewed coffee, scrambled eggs with sausage and buttered toast.  We swapped more stories for about an hour over a standing kitchen breakfast before packing up and hitting the road again.  I can’t say enough about the generosity of strangers, friends that we haven’t yet met.

Our plan for the day was to try and beat the weather, make it to the Sulak campground by around 6pm.  As per usual, things did not go according to plan.  Thunder started rolling over the hillsides around noon.  We stopped to rain gear up and then beat foot as fast as would could off of the ridge line we found ourselves on.  The trail met up with an old dirt road with a small clearing just before the big rain and lightning started.  We dropped packs and threw up the tent quick as we could and took shelter.  Lightning & thunder were about 12-15 seconds apart so we felt fairly safe just riding it out for a bit.  We didn’t have enough data to get weather info for ourselves but Mel was texting Brianna Radar updates, our “eyes in the sky”.  Pretty much everywhere in Michigan was getting rocked, and hard.  We were lucky, again.

The forced weather break made for an excellent excuse to eat some lunch and siesta, so we did both.

After breaking shelter and hiking for another few miles, we came across a little campground called Timber Creek Trailhead.  I hadn’t realized it before, but it was a proper campground with drinking water and vault toilets.  Sulak campgrounds, our intended destination was still about three miles away… but why leave a good thing once you’ve found it?  More rain was due in the evening and we had perfect campsites to choose from and hardened bathroom structures if shit got hairy during the storm.  If there is one thing we have learned on this trip it’s not to pass up a great thing at a great time.  So we paid the $10 fee at the little drop box and made camp.

Side note on the drinking water: I wish there was a video of me hand pumping that thing with one hand and trying to catch the water with a bottle in the other hand. I was wet and probably looked silly. The water was cold, delicious and worth it.

The rain is starting to pour, the wind beginning to whip; we are home.

A night full or wind and rain, mostly restful.  Wind so strong that It seemed as though the tent would lift off from the ground at times!  Luckily, or skillfully, Brianna and I assembled it properly tight such that nothing helicoptered off into the night or collapsed in on us.  

We fell asleep to a mixture or storm and our neighbors watching what sounded like a kung fu movie.  First people we have seen on the trail in a few days and it turned out to be a sweet old couple in Motor home, Jeep in tow.  They come out to Timber Creek trailhead for about a week every year.  Not only is Timber Creek a trailhead for hiking, but it’s also a trailhead for jeeps to off-road.  It makes sense, we cross over four wheeler / Jeep trails every few miles.

It took a few turns of our internal ignition keys but we finally made it out of the tent and into our normal routines around 0630.  We needed to make good time today, every mile could get in meant one less mile to do tomorrow.  So naturally, we hiked the first seven miles of the day by 1100 and then took a three hour break.  We came across a sweet remote camping site @ Bowman Lake and were more than ready for a lunch break.  The tent was went from the storms so we needed to set it up for drying out… then, once it was dry, we napped for a couple hours.  Pretty sweet little afternoon.  

The day ended up with 13ish trail miles, even with the extended break.  And to clarify, trail miles are miles that count on the map, not the amount of walking we actually do in a day.  There is probably about 1/4 mile of non trail walking per actual trail mile.  These non-trail miles can be from getting lost, exploring side trails, wondering off to poop; use your imagination.

Our camp for the night was planned to be under the red pines next to a creek.  We did make it here, just had another hasty setup as a random thunderstorm popped up almost immediately after our arrival.  Dusk is coming soon and I’m excited to hear what sounds this part of the forest will be bringing our way this chillier than normal eve.  

Tomorrow is our 10 year anniversary and have plans to meet up with family at Walkup Lake Campgrounds!  Until then, happy trails!

Slugs were slimming around the outside of the tent in every direction our blurry eyes could see this morning.  I’m not sure if slugs and pine trees go together, or if was the colder temperatures, but this was our first time encountering an army of shelless snails.  

The mornings where we are dispersed camping are always a bit more chaotic than when we are at established campgrounds.  There are no tables or flat surfaces.  There are no clean places to set gear while you organize the pack unless you get it all done while still in the tent. Do you pack out the tent and then make coffee or make the coffee before packing out the tent?  Life decisions on the trail, let me tell ya what.

Today was pretty much a dead on sprint to the finish line of Walkup Lake Campground.  Penny and Shauna were due to meet us there with a buffet of trail magic food; they did not disappoint.  Brianna has two basic speeds of hiking.  Her normal pace, which is pretty fast, or the lunch/dinner shuffle, which is even more fast.  With today being a buffet shuffle, you can imagine at what quick pace that might have been.

The most notable part of today’s trail were the wetlands.  Trails led through at least five miles of nothing but wetlands.  A quarter of that five miles was wooden walking bridges and stepping logs joined together by planks on the top.  Not an easy area to Brianna shuffle on.  Even at the higher speed, I do feel like we took the time to appreciate the uniquely valuable area it is.  A sign on both ends of the wetlands is quick to remind you that: “Over half of Michigan’s wetlands have been filled or drained since 1850.  I’m guessing that made a few people a bunch of money.  I wish this made me feel like the other 50% are safe.

Brianna has not made a single wrong turn the entire time we’ve been on the trail… until today.  Instead of going straight down the path, where it was clearly marked, she takes a left down a rather steep hill.  The map said we still had a half mile left before hitting a road and doing a road walk to the campgrounds.  Nowhere on the map did this side trail even exist, and yet, Brianna unknowingly takes a wrong turn the led directly to Shauna and Penny.  Mother Daughter bond or fat girl intuition?  I’ll let you be the judge.

Shauna and Penny were able to snag one of the two best camping spots on the grounds.  There were about ten other camping spots up the hill, only two by the lake.  The spots on the hill were fine but that’s also where all the people were.  There were kids, dogs, yelling parents and generators; we couldn’t hear any of that down by the lake.  And these federal campgrounds are only $10 a night.  How did we not know about all these before now?

The day and night were more than perfect.  Penny cooked us homemade goulash, we got Shauna’s special pasta salad, and everything else we could’ve imagined.  More things than I can remember to list.  I’ll just say that there was beer and cheesecake. Just when we thought we were full, my buddy Curt shows up with a White Cloud pizza and cheese bread.  We drank by the fire late into the evening before eventually retiring to our tents.

This was a very happy anniversary.

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.

It’s been a few days and I’m still not sure how to write the final day of our 10-day hike through the Manistee Forests.  I’ve written and deleted more paragraphs than this last post will end up being, I’m sure. Our trip was amazing and awful, ugly and beautiful.  I’m left sitting here wondering if I wrote the way I wanted to or if we learned all of the things we needed to learn.

The world we planned the hike in is not the world we hiked in.  COVID makes the future murky to think about, the fear it brings, the damage it does, the reactions we have to it.  Truthfully, COVID played a huge part in how our hike played out.  I have no idea how busy the trail would have been in a ‘normal’ world.  What I do know is that we stayed many nights in established campgrounds with no neighbors around us; the nights were quiet and wild.  Most people daydream about camping as an intimate experience in the forest and we actually experienced it.  Most nights had no generators, no dogs, it was only us and the cranes, loons, deer, bear, and snakes.  The trail owned us, and we owned it, for a time.

With the first 100+ mile trail under our belts, it seems more possible than ever that our long-distance hiking plans will actually happen.  Not that this trip was necessary, it just provided a lot of things we needed without knowing that we needed them.  That is what hiking is, you encounter a lot of fucked up situations and only have what you have to deal with them.  I’m not going to pretend like we were happy the entire time, we weren’t. 

Hardship and the lack of enjoyment makes the good times better.  Our bodies are capable of so much.  I’ve spent so much time doing nothing with my body and wondering why it stops working the way I expect.  How surprised was I to find that the more I pushed my body, the better it responded.  The more work we did, the more pain we felt.  The more pain we felt, the more the body healed.  It has taken a few days for the body to zero out since we’ve been back home; feet swelling to go down, appetite to normalize.

So what did we learn?

• Writing on the hard days is just as important as writing on the good days.
• Do not trust maps.
• Do not pass by an actual water source in lieu of an unknown.
• Do carry less water if the weather, terrain, and likely water sources allow for it.  A liter of water is 2.2lbs.  If you are carrying a 30lb bag, 2.2lbs is a 7% increase.
• Battery management is challenging, even with an extra battery pack.
• Bringing a fishing pole on a hiking trip only works if you have energy at the end of the day and don’t mind smelling like fish for the rest of the trip.  I sent my gear home with Shauna on day 3.
• Sharing your hiking experience with family and friends as it’s happening is half the fun, more than half on the bad days.
• We love to hike.  We love to hike together.

I guess that’s it for this trip?  Time to plan the next one!