Category: NCT

Checkout time at the Sunshine Motel & Cabins was 1000am, but that doesn’t mean we had to start the trail at that time, far from it.  With heavy rain in the forecast, our plan for the day was to take it slow.  There’s no reason to hike in the rain if you don’t have to.  Unlike a few days ago, we had options.

We started our day out with breakfast back at Styls cafe.  It was delicious.  Even picked up fresh baked Apple Fritters & custard filled Long Johns for the inevitable long wait we would have in the car waiting for the rain to pass.

You might think that sitting in a car for four hours waiting for the rain to stop was boring, but it really wasn’t a bad way to spend the day.  We played Rummy in the backseat for a while.  When the rain really got heavy, we put on a podcast about serial killers and their victims while I napped and Brianna stretched out to relax.  We knew that starting the day out dry was worth lazing around together for a while.

The first part of our trail today really was pristine.  A wheelchair accessible path down to O Kun De Kun Falls allowed us to make great time over the first mile and a half.  Our female hiker friends from a few days ago had warned us about a trail diversion coming up that was due to a beaver dam causing a normal river crossing to become too wide and too deep.  All we really wanted to get done today is to get past the beaver pond.

We were told that there would be some bushwhacking involved for finding the diverted trail and they were right.  The difference between walking an established trail and making your own is a lot of extra time and calories burned.  

We were geared up in emergency ponchos to keep the wet world from touching our stuff.  Our stuff didn’t get dry, but you can imagine how thin plastic held up through all the bushwhacking.  While we weren’t the first people on the diverted trail, it was pretty rough going.  Our ponchos looked like we had gotten into a fight with the beaver and the beaver had won.

Even with the beaver pond diversion, we made a solid 8 miles in around 4 hours.  We left the car around 330pm and arrived to camp by 730pm.  Camp spot for tonight is a grassy NCT parking lot just off Gardner road.  Pretty slick spot for being nowhere.  We could have hiked a couple more miles before camping tonight but that would violate trail rule #242 – Don’t pass up a good thing in search of a better thing.

We are hoping to put a good amount of miles in tomorrow, see if we can put ourselves in range of making the next hiker shelter on Wednesday night.

This morning was a catastrophe.  Our goal to put in a lot of miles stalled out before we had even made one.  Shortly after crossing Gardner road, we were met with a sign telling us another trail diversion was coming, “No Ford East Ontonagon River.”  Much like the beaver pond diversion, there were orange markers that we dutifully followed as long as we could see them.

After the orange markers stopped appearing is where we ran into trouble.  While there were no orange markers, there were still the normal blue markers heading towards the Ontonagon river.  We knew that were not supposed to cross it, but there were no other trail markers.  The trail was rough, as if no one has really gone down it in a while (our first sign of shit gone sideways).  We bushwhacked our way down to the river and sure enough, way too deep and fast to cross.  We then headed back up to the last orange marker, looked around, saw nothing new and went back down the gnarly trail.

Going in the wrong direction once and turning around is humbling, doing it twice is an act of contrition.  If the big guy up above is keeping score, I’ve got a pretty big sin coming my way for freesies.

Fuck it.  The best option from this point was to head back to where we started and road walk north to a bridge that crossed the East Ontonagon.  On our way down the road, we found a sign clearly pointing westbound hikers in the proper trail direction.  Feels like this section of the trail tends to hate on us eastbound folk.  It was after 11 and we had only gone about 1.5 trail miles.

On the bright side.. Brianna and I are gaining experience and comfort in off trail navigation.  Experience builds confidence, confidence equals success (paraphrasing Andy in Life Below Zero TV show).

The rest of our day was basically a full on sprint.  The trail gods provided us with well maintained paths, even some wooden boards with chain link slip guards over some swampy areas.  Brianna’s pace was on fire, hit 3.2 miles in about 50 minutes at one point.  Brianna and her eagle eyes generally lead.  She can spot the blue blazes better than I can and not having to look for blue blazes allows me to focus on not kicking roots and rocks, as I so often do.

NCT trail put us through some funny riddle challenges this afternoon that are too funny not to mention. Trees that were down in the middle of an uphill climbing trail – do you go around at your own peril or climb the tree branches as if it were still alive? My favorite was the floating bridge. Brianna and I were walking through knee deep swamp when there was suddenly a foot or two drop off. In the middle of the drop of was a single floating board, seemly useless and out of place. We stood in the knee deep water for a moment pondering the reality of getting our entire bodies wet when it hit me. Step on the board, sink it to the bottom, walk over the board. It worked! Penalty for getting that wrong is steep… get it?

The goal was to make it past mile 141 and we finally camped at 142.5.  We totaled 16 trail miles, probably around 20 with the morning snafu.  Our camp spot is under some pines on uneven ground.  A good parallel for the day as a whole, not ideal, but it’ll do.  Time for dinner and hot cocoa.

Last night was one of not much sleep.  Brianna and I both fell asleep rather quickly but were woken up by midnight rains and heavily gusting winds.  A tree near our tent would creek every time a gust of wind would hit, making us wonder if we had chosen the best spot for the tent.  

You should always be willing to reevaluate decisions based on safety but at a certain point you also have to trust in what your eyes saw in the daylight.  A lot of factors go into choosing a tent site.  It could be the flattest ground on a high level, but if there is a widow maker nearby, it may as well be on the moon.  Which is an odd thing to say as there is no gravity on the moon… This is how we ended up on slightly lower uneven ground, the best spots were the worst.

Make no mistake, trees are the deadliest things out there.  Unlike bears and big cats, trees are everywhere and they can kill you many years after they themselves died.  Choosing tree to sleep near with is kind of like picking your friends.  Try to choose the ones that look lively and hope they aren’t dead on the inside.

Our morning started out better than yesterday’s.  It was a dry campsite for us again (no water nearby), so we came up with a plan to have hot chocolate mixed with coffee and a stoop waffle topper for breakfast.  Real breakfast would happen when we reached the first viable water source for the day.  Priorities.  It worked out nicely.

Making it to Mile 142.5 the night before meant that we had a 19 mile day ahead of us if we were to make it to the Oren Krumm hiker shelter at mile 161.5.

The trail was beautiful and varying with only a few spots of elevation gain and loss.  Landscapes changed dramatically, everything from ridge walking, to walking along the sturgeon river and even walking through a 2007 forest fire burned section.  Today made it clear that we are out of the mountains and in for a very different hike for the last few days.

Two points on the map made me worried for the day.  The points show up as purple dots and mention fording a creek and fording a river.  With the two mostly no rain days in a row, we got our feet wet but neither Ford was higher than ankle deep.  We actually had a long hot lunch on the other side of Silver river.  Just because you’re in a hurry doesn’t mean you can’t take time for the good stuff.

There was no water on the trail for the last ten miles of the day, which meant we only had the water on us until reaching the shelter.  No water also means less mud, no wet feet, faster miles.  Afternoon came and Brianna put the peddle down, I clocked her using GPS on the Garmin and she was averaging a 3.3 mph pace.  Our cadence is to push for an hour and break.  We only needed about four solid afternoon pushes.  We were at the shelter before 7pm.

This shelter is the Hilton of backwoods camping.  There are bunk beds, a campfire, the privy even has better toilet paper than hotels.  We are so happy to be here, even happier that no one else is here with us.

Tonight is a new experience as I lay in the bunkbed writing.  The mice are crawling across the screen windows like Mario in Super Mario World.  It’s quite impressive.  I’ve taken it upon myself to try and cover the holes with duct tape from our holes, it’s not working.

Rain ping pinging off the metal roof woke us up this morning around 0700.  It was raining and we didn’t have to care about making coffee in the rain or putting a wet tent away.  A super way to start any rainy trail day.  We knew it was going to be a two coffee kind of day before the first coffee had even been made.

We got out the door and on the trail around 1100.  Plan for the day was to wing it with a side of probably not do too many miles.  From the Oren Krumm shelter, there are only 16 miles left until our finish line at Canyon Falls; Big Lake State Campground is just a 6 mile hike away.  If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d say that we will be staying there if any of the twelve campsites are open.

Instead of talking about how frustrating today’s trail was in all of it’s pointless looping and how we took a couple wrong turns that added onto our day, I’m just going to skip to the part where we arrived at the campground.  

The lack of people at this lovely State of Michigan Campground was quite shocking to us.  Everything up north has been booked and booming.  Many of the locals we have talked with mention that this time of year is usually busy but COVID has made it even more busy and it’s been this way most of the summer.  It’s  anecdotal, I know, but everywhere except the NCT has been booked up from we have seen as well.  Getting away into th wilderness areas is one thing, long distance hiking is an entirely different level of crazy.

We weren’t at the campground for but five minutes before a gentleman from the only camper at the grounds drove up and greeted us.  Terry Lee was his name, he and his wife are camping with friends tomorrow and came a day early.  We told him what we were up to and before long he was offering us cooked sweet corn.  We love sweet corn – yes, please!  Terry also brought us home grown potatoes, tomatoes, green beans and a pot of bean soup.  

Side story about the green beans.  Terry also had his twelve year old Shih Tzu, Yorkie mix dog with him, Susie.  She was the most adorable thing, but let me tell you, don’t take your eyes off her.  I was munching on fresh green beans and she popped up and stole a bite right from my hand.  Looks like an Athena, acts like a Duke!  Well played, Susie, well played.

All of the fresh foods were delicious.  Brianna cut and cooked the potatoes to mix with our chicken and gravy dinner.  I’m actually writing by a fire that is only possible because Terry brought us some wood.  Did I mention he showed us their camper and handed Brianna & I each a Busch Light?  Many thanks to Terry, his wife whose name I didn’t catch, and yes, even Susie.  

It’s easy to imagine all of the evil people in the world when there is so much bad being broadcast about, but sometimes it goes the other way too.  If you don’t put anything out there, you’ll most certainly not get anything back.  Long distance hiking has on multiple occasions shown us that people want to do good things for people they don’t know.  Maybe it’s easy to do good for hikers because our story is so in your face.  We are carrying everything we have, we have nothing else.

All of Brianna and I’s run-ins with people on the trail have been especially cool because we are not outgoing people, everyone has approached us.  We aren’t introverts because we choose to be, but maybe the long distance hiking will help us be extroverts when we want to be.  The world is a big place with plenty of room for us to become bigger people.

Tonight we sleep by the lake.  A quiet little spot by the fire to spend our last night.  10 miles left tomorrow and then we get to see Shelly and Paul!

🎵 Happy trails to you, until, we meet, again🎵 

Suddenly, I was awake.  Brianna had searched the Happy Trails song on YouTube from her phone and thought it might be a fun way to wake me up.  She was right.  The quiet campground was an easy night for a hard sleep.  If she hadn’t woken me, I might have slept til noon.

Only 10 miles to reach Paul and Shelly at the finish line today.  Were we eager to see them and finish?  Yes.  Does that mean we didn’t have second coffee and dink around for a good long while?  No.  

After everything was all packed up, we made a point to bring Terry the unused wood, but most importantly, to see him again and let him know how appreciative we were and are for everything he did for us.  Trail rule #243 – Treat everyone with respect.  Trail rule #244 – treat trail angels like angels.

The last morning chore we had for the day was to refill our water bottles from the campground’s hand pump ground well before hitting the road.  Well, one full water liter bottle each plus another half liter each for mixing a flavored caffeine drink.  Because that’s what we need after two cups of coffee, more caffeine.  As we filled the water bottles, we were chatted up by a couple that had camped on the other side of the grounds.  

The youngish couple, about my age, actually stopped by our campsite last night when we were hiding from the wind and rain, didn’t get much time to talk though.  They are from Marquette and on a two week Western UP mountain biking trip, using all the dirt two track roads we hike across to get from point A to point B.  Methods of transport are different, the madness is basically the same. We all love the outdoors enough to be out here pushing our limits.  It was great sharing stories and the common bond with a new set of strangers.  The lady biker even gave us four RX bars because she couldn’t eat them anymore, she had switched to Snickers.  We tried one and it was ok, reminded us why we never pack food bars for hiking.

Departure time ended up being around 0930, the trail crosses right in front of the campground so there were no problems getting back on and churning out some miles.  It was another day of little elevation gain or loss, hiking through valleys of ferns and pine forests.  Blue skies lead the way as we pushed for a 1-2pm arrival at the Canyon Falls parking lot.  Brianna and I basically sprinted until reaching the Canyon, which is impossible to sprint, because of broken rocks and beauty.  Of the dozens of waterfalls we have seen on this trip, Canyon Falls & Manabezno Falls are the most impressive and must sees.

Canyon Falls is what you would expect it to be, Sturgeon River water cascading down through a rock layered canyon.  The hike down isn’t more than half a mile with a perfect view of the raging river the entire time.  The parking lot was full, but the trails are mostly wide enough and have enough splits that keeping a distance is pretty easy.

Shelly and Paul greeted us at the parking lot with cold beers and big smiles!  Dirty hippie hugs were exchanged.  They say we didn’t smell as bad as we said we would, which makes me feel like we’ve let them down.  I did put on my cleaner shirt and wipe myself down the day before, oops.

So ends our 14 day hiking trip!  We are staying at a little AirBnB right on the Keweenaw Bay for the rest of the weekend.  There is a fire pit next to the water and we are surrounded by people we love in a time that we aren’t able to be with all the other people we love.  

Thank you reading along with us.  I’m going to post a questions and answers write-up soon.  Not that anyone has asked us questions, it’ll be more of a hypothetical set of questions that I assume people might ask if given the chance to.