North Manitou Hiking Trip May 23rd – May 26th
2013
Once again, I am way behind on my blogging and trying to
catch up. I decided to do a short hiking
trip to North Manitou island over Memorial Weekend just for practice with some
of the new equipment I got and to practice hiking in colder weather.
After work on Thursday, I ran home real quick to grab all my
stuff and head of to Traverse City for the night. I booked this cheap hotel just outside of
downtown for around 50 bucks. At first I
was a little worried by the cheapness, but it was a great find!
That night I didn’t sleep too well because I was nervous
about getting up in time and making the morning ferry over to the island. But, I got up early Friday morning, checked
out, and made the 30-minute drive over to Leland.
As I got to the Ferry dock, I realized that a ton of people
were going over to the island for the weekend.
When I scheduled my ferry time, the morning boat was actually full, but
they told me to show up anyway and they might be able to squeeze me on
board. Luckily, they were able to get me
on the 10:30 boat. So, I checked in, got
all my camping permits, dumped off my pack, parked the car and waited on the ferry
to leave for the island.
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| Getting off the boat and arriving to the island |
The weather that day was really clear and sunny, but man was
it chilly in the morning! It’s about an
hour boat ride over to the island and by the time we got over there I was
freezing. As soon as we landed and got
all our gear out, I ran to the port a john to put on my Under Armour long
underwear. Once I was toasty warm, we
had a brief orientation about hiking and camping on the island. It’s pretty simple really. No fires, only stoves. Pack out what you pack in. Camp at least 300 feet away from any
water. Be mindful of any posted
signs. And then we were free to go.
Once orientation was done, I walked around the old village a
little to look at the buildings and see what had changed over the years. Back in the day, the island was a bustling
little town that was part of the lumber industry. The loggers had formed a small community of
houses on the island, complete with a school, roads, supposedly a small rail
system and even a cemetery. When the
lumber industry died off, the town faded away and eventually the Coast Guard
took over ownership of the island and had a post out there. The Coast Guard post doesn’t exist anymore,
but eventually the land became part of the national parks systems. And, since it’s a national park, everything
that was there had to remain there, including anything leftover from the
previous industries. It’s weird because
some of the buildings they let deteriorate and some of the buildings they fix,
I’m not sure who determines what but some of these houses are really amazing.
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| They obviously didn't maintain this house |
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| The old Coast Guard homes, now used for the DNR rangers |
After walking around the main village, I headed out towards
the southern part of the island. My goal
was to just follow the trail south and west until I hit the western side of the
island where I wanted to camp for the night.
The trails on the island are really wide and easy to navigate, this
place makes for a great easy, practice hiking trip.
After a few miles heading South, I came to the island
cemetery and about ½ mile past that was an old homestead called Bournique’s.
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| I think it's cool how you can still see the old paint and cement weatherproofing |
From there I headed West towards the coast. It was pretty early when I got to Lake
Michigan, so I just took my time setting up camp, snacking and enjoying the
view.
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| Campsite for the first night |
Around 6 or so I decided to break out my little stove and
heat up one of my freeze dried meals. As
I was cooking and eating, I heard what sounded like two people climbing up the
bluff from the beach down below. I was a
little bummed because I really don’t like running into people when I’m out
hiking, even though this particular weekend it was hard not to run into people
because there were a ton of people on the island. Anyway, I figured they would just pop up into
my camp, say hi, and go on their way.
All of a sudden, I see a doe finishing climbing up the bluff and she’s
standing about 10 feet away from my and my little camp. She looked at me and just casually meandered
about eating grass and leaves. I slowly
stood up and kind of moved around to let her know I was there, but she never
got spooked and she never took off running.
She just slowly walked away. I
thought, “wow, these deer are pretty tame!”.
Side note: at the end
of the weekend, I talked to a ranger about the deer. He said that there’s about 200 deer on the
island and that because the island is closed off during the winter to hikers,
the deer sort of ‘forget’ about humans.
He said that in the early spring, they really don’t understand what you
are, so even though they appear to be tame, they aren’t. He said that he has had deer follow him
around before and just hang out with him.
But, by mid-summer, they realize that humans are ‘dangerous’ and they
will stay off the paths and hide out more in the woods away from people.
After my deer encounter and dinner, I just crashed in my
tent and read a book for a couple of hours.
Around early morning, I woke up to go pee and I had the worst headache
I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was
so bad, that I almost felt like I was going to puke. I thought that maybe I was really dehydrated,
so I drank a bunch of water and dug some motrin out of my first-aid kit. I figured I would go back to sleep and wake
up later and feel fine. Throughout the
morning, I kept waking up here and there, but my headache was just getting
worse. I didn’t have that many more
motrin, so I took two more, saving the last ones for later. I don’t know what was happening to me but I
could not move my head hurt so bad.
Finally, around 11:30, it was too hot to lay in that tent anymore and I
had to force myself to get up and get going.
I spent probably an hour slowly packing up my camp and moving
around. If I moved too fast my head hurt
and I felt like I was going to puke.
This was the worst! I had to get
to my next stopping point before nightfall because the next morning I needed to
get on the boat!
I finally got all my
gear ready and starting hiking again. I
was hoping that my adrenalin would kick in and make my headache go away. After about 10 minutes, I did feel a little
better, but my headache was still lingering.
I only had to hike about 8 miles that day to get to my next stopping
point, which was going to be at the island’s inland lake, Lake Manitou. Because the island was home to this old
logging community, you will pass a lot of random junk just on the side of the
trail. I was on the northern side of the island,
by the old ‘Stormer Camp’ , when I saw a bunch of old trucks pushed back into
the woods. I have been to this island 3
times, and I had never noticed this stuff here before. So, I wandered off the trail to check out all
the old logging trucks or what was left of them.
Around 4pm or so, I finally made it to Lake Manitou. Once I found a nice spot to camp, I set up my
stuff and went down to the lake to filter water and enjoy the scenery.
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| My 2nd camp |
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| Lake Manitou |
There were a lot of people camping around the
lake, so they were hard to avoid. I got
my Nalgene bottles filled and took extra water back to my camp in this
portable, fold-up bucket. Once I got
settled, I got out my little stove to make my dinner. The stove I have used refillable canisters
and used white gas. It’s somewhat of a
pain, because you need a very flat surface to set up the stove on. I had found a nice, dead stump to use as a
makeshift table. Once I got my stove
set-up, I primed the stove to get ready to light. Priming the stove just requires you to open
up the valve to let some of the gas out.
Once you light it, the excess will burn off and you can open up the
valve full blast and get a nice strong flame.
Weeeeeeell, apparently I had primed the stove with too much gas. And because the stove was not on a completely
flat surface, a little spilled out of the priming cup. So, when I lit the gas, I had quite a large
flame on my stove. I blew on the flame,
which is what I normally do. However,
because of the excess gas in the cup, and the overflow from the cup, I blew the
flame onto more gas and blew droplets of gas onto the dry stump I was using as
a table. Now the stump has a little pool
of lit gasoline on it. I take the cloth,
that I use to wipe down my stove with, out to use to stomp out the flame. What my brain failed to remember is: I have used this cloth to wipe GAS from my
stove! Therefore, the cloth catches
on fire in quick “Poof” and my reaction is to toss it on the pine needle and
dry leaf covered ground. Now I have my
stove on fire, the stump on fire, and a patch of dry pine needles on fire. Luckily, I have my portable bucket full of
water at my camp. So I pour the water on
the ground fire and on the stump. I run
back to the lake, fill up the bucket, and run back to camp and pour more water
on it. The fire is finally out, except
for my stove where it needs to be. But
now there are clouds of smoke in the air and you can smell the smell of burning
leaves. One of the big no-nos on the
island is that you are not allowed to have fires, you can only use stoves and
if a ranger sees smoke or smells smoke they will find you and ticket you. After that debacle, I manage to make my
dinner and eat it without further incident.
I’m not really sure how I manage to get myself in these situations and
get out without doing any major damage. and how I didn't manage to burn down the island is beyond me.
After recovering from almost setting the island on fire, I
crashed in my tent and read my book for a while and then just fell asleep at
some point. The next morning I had to
wake up early and get going because I had to get back to the docks for the 10am
pick up. I only had to walk about 2-3
miles that morning so it was as easy hike.
I made it back to the docks with plenty of time to sit, relax and read
before the boat showed up. When the boat
arrived, we packed up our gear and headed back to the mainland. When we got to Lealand, the little town was
packed with people! So I had to hike my
gear another ½ mile to where my car was parked since I would not be able to
move it closer. Once I got to my car, I
had planned on changing my clothes and hosing down a little bit. I figured, since I was parked in this vast,
parking lot full of other cars, that no one would see me. However, having the good luck that I do, a
couple, who had just gotten off the island as well, was parked right next to
me. As I waited patiently for them to
leave, it seemed like they were waiting for ME to leave. I think that they had planned on changing and
sort-of car showering like I had. At
this point I was pissed and I didn’t give a crap any more who saw me
naked. So, I crawled in the back of my
jeep, which does have tinted windows by the way, and I stripped down and used about 1000
baby wipes to get some of the stink off of me.
Then I managed to change my clothes and make myself somewhat decent. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the
couple next to me had given up and striped down too. How is it that out of 200 parked, empty, cars
that I end up parked next to the only other people that need some privacy to
change their clothes??
Once I pulled myself together, I headed out of
Lealand and back towards Traverse City where I had planned on meeting a friend
for lunch just south of the city. The
place looked like a dump, but the food was great and I love going to dumpy,
little, hole-in-the-wall places. After
lunch, I just took off and kept heading south back home to Holland. Another sort-of successful hiking trip
complete! 
