NCT Diary: Aug 6-17

Grand Rapids to Petosky, MI

Aug 6th: gently raining enjoying being cooled off until bam! big rain. Everything soaked and miserable, oak prairie beautiful but no shelter. Sugar overdose from Lil Debbies, horrible busy road with no shoulder, fell asleep to frog trills

Aug 7th: first peace and quiet in a long while, could hear myself think and let my mind wander contemplatively instead of anxiously

Aug 8th: camp at Bowman lake, seeing Alan again with his camper

Aug 9th: rain storm forecast, went to Walhalla but no rain storm of course. Alan the trail angel saved the day, tiny motel with RealTree camo sheets, didn't do writing. Unplanned nearos always feel so weird

Aug 10th: super silent forest, weird day, baby raccoons. Tempted to eat all my candy.

Aug 11th: just as soon as we sat down, the sky closed over with clouds and with them, stifling humid heat. Short lunch, packed up in a rush as rain looked more and more likely. Temp increase but no rain. Ridgeline snowmobile track, pop up camper. Thinking about next year's road trip. What if we took the Subaru? Elevated rib of land hardly wider than the trail, remnants of an ancient sand dune. Cool geography

Aug 12: hike along riverbank, very peaceful with big oaks and viewpoints over oxbow loops, manitoba-like. Tired and cranky Constantine, nice Michigan guys offered us food, best campsite of whole trail, eating goldfish and watching meteor shower, milky way

Aug 13th: chipmunk in pack, trail magic bucket, slow because it's too awesome

August 14th: missing - here's what I would have written: Got into Kalkaska and heroed it, awesome day with Lisa, new sleeping pad!!!!

Aug 15th blowdown every 10ft near sand lake, strong desire after relaxing non-nearo to not hike, sit in lawn chair by lake and hang out playing board games all day, pleasant flat forest hiking with dry heat. Ideal summer day, Jordan River Valley beautiful, very day-hiker territory but gorgeous. So much variety of habitat in this section

Aug 16th: first schwaky section, dirt road walk through swampy area, feeling tired

Aug 17th: this day is entirely missing in my notes and I have no memory of it whatsoever. I think we walked a lot of flat logging roads??? Unclear. Would have been one day outside of Petosky. The next post should catch us up to the present, I think.