The Porkies

 

This has been a great summer for Amy and I.  Hiking all told we will have logged just shy of 90 miles in the back country in some of the most beautiful trails in the upper Midwest.  This time we are in Porcupine Mountains, with Mark.  We met up at the trail head and headed out.  We missed our first spur trail and ended up with a late morning snack at the site we had planned to camp at.  It would have been a good spot, but we pushed on south along Overlook trail and headed West on Government Peak.  Government Peak has an old foundation and was possibly a fire tower at some time.  We hiked down the trail on the back side and camped on a level clearing along a beaver pond.  The water sources was weak, yellow stained and stagnant but we found an our flowing stream that was a little better.  A standard morning of coffee and oatmeal as and we were back on the trail. We stayed north of Mirror lake and the family cabins and fancy composting toilets and worked our way up a steep and rock strewn path towards Correction Line Trail before heading back East on Big Carp.  We camped close to the intersection of these two trails.  One of the bear poles had been ripped out but luckily we found another.  There were several sites in the area but all were full and when a father/son duo asked to share fire space we obliged.  The kid was loaded down with full bags of apples and packages of Oreos.  Dad was carrying most this is a duffle bag slung across his chest.  We had hiked long that day and the fire was a great way to relax.  We sucked bourbon and laughed about the trail.  This is about the time Amy started to crave cheese cake and among the many faces we saw in the trees and rocks she even starting to see perfect pieces of cheese cake in the last mile.  Amy was sure that her camera would ‘cut the smoke” and we took plenty of pictures to collect evidence to the contrary.

We hiked up Big Carp all the way back to the Lake of the Clouds and after climbing the escarpment all day we descended again.  We needed a swim and the water felt amazing as we bathed and looked up at the high granite walls that we would climb the next morning.  We set alarm clocks and were packed up and out of camp before the sun was fully up.  The plan was breakfast on the escarpment, hundreds of vertical feet from where we swam.  It was an amazing cup of coffee and oatmeal on the wind swept heights.  The final trail segment stayed high all day. The sky was clear and the views were amazing.  The hike had continued to impress and I am glad we did it in the clockwise rotation we did.  Along the trail was a red squirrel laying motionless on a pine branch.  We didn’t realize why he showed no fear of us until we watched the young bald eagle soaring below us