Hiking North Manitou Island Sept. 5-7th, 2015

Hiking North Manitou Island - I'm catching up on my blogging!

Sept. 5-7^th

I wanted to do one last small hiking trip before summer was officially over.  I figured I could drag Gary along with me, as long as we did something easy.  I also figured North Manitou would be perfect.  It’s easy hiking and since I have been there a half of a dozen times, I thought it would be a good trip to ease Gary into….especially since he’s really not much of a camping or hiking person.

So, Saturday morning we drive up to Leland to catch the 3pm boat for North Manitou.  The weather was really great and it was Labor Day weekend, so there were a ton of people heading over.  We dropped our stuff off at the loading dock, parked the car for the weekend, grabbed some lunch and headed to the dock to wait for the boat. 

The boat we took was not the usual boat that I have taken to NM.  The boat we took was the boat that they normally take to South Manitou.  It was huge and even had a snack bar where you could buy drinks!  All of the day travelers and campers were drinking the whole way over. Lol

Once we arrived, we did our typical check in.  Gary asked what that was all about.  I told him that you need to tell the DNR where you plan to hike and camp and for how long so that if you go missing they know where to look for the bodies.  Unbeknownst to me, one of the DNR guys was walking behind us and he laughed and said “Don’t scare him!”

After check-in, we gathered up our stuff and headed out.  I figured we would do what I typically do:  hike to the west side of the island and camp for the night.  Then the next day, we hike to the little inland lake and camp for the night.  Then the final day, we walk out back to the dock for pick up.  I think millage wise is was around 7.5 miles the first day, 7.5 miles the second and 2.5 miles the last day.  I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal, especially since there were 2 of us to carry all the gear.  Usually, it’s just me! 

We are all smiles because we just arrived and Gary doesn't know what's in store for him

Bournique's place

Left over vehicles from the logging days

Left over vehicles from the logging days

The island cemetery - where I'm pretty sure Gary thought he was going to end up at.

After our adventure weekend, Gary put together a ‘top ten’ list of items that he was going to send to Meghann as a warning…..since I have been trying to get her to hike with me for about a year now.  Below is that list.  However, I have an explanation for each item that Gary grossly exaggerated on!

Hiking with Amy; top 10 things you hear-
1. "This is an easy one"
  Lie! Everything she says to make you keep walking is either a falsehood, an exaggeration or white lie.

North Manitou IS an easy hike and 7.5 miles isn’t THAT far.  And I did keep saying encouraging things to keep him going… I had to because there was no way I would be able to carry all of our gear and a body at the same time! lol

2. "Only one more mile"
   This means there's probably one more mile after this mile and possibly another mile after that mile and....

Well, the trails are broken up into sections.  So, it would be only 1 more mile to the next trail head, but then the next trail would be, like, another mile or more long.  So, technically that wasn’t a lie…more like a fiblet.

3. "We're almost there"
    This certainly means we're almost NOT there.

Wrong!  We WERE almost there!

4. "You're doing good"
 When she says you're doing good, that means she just realized it’s twice as far as she thought.

These were simply words of encouragement to keep princess Gary walking on the trails and not collapsing in hopes that the DNR would just come and get him.  Besides, after hiking about 1 minute, princess complained that the pack was too heavy and was hurting his sides.  So, I ended up carrying: the tent, all of our clothes, some food, a bag of odds and ends, the water filter and the stove.  Gary’s pack included: 2 feather light sleeping bags and the bear barrel full of food.  My pack was most certainly heavier!

5. "You're doing good, we're almost there"
    The vultures have started circling

There were no vultures on North Manitou. J  But we did see 4 ferocious deer!

6. "Haaa ha ha"
    When she leans against the sign showing distance to go, and she's laughing, don't ask just keep walking.

That only happened one time!  We were almost to the inland lake and I said that all we had to do was walk down this little trail and there the lake would be…but the trail head sign said “0.6 miles”.  I didn’t want him to freak out, so I covered the sign and told him to just walk past it!

7. "I walked 18 miles the first day"
   Amy's hiking math has no logic. If I can run 6 miles, then when I'm hiking I can walk 6 miles, then just simply add another 12 for a total of 18 miles. Huh?

Well….I figured if I can run 6 miles easily, then I should be able to hike a lot farther!  So yeah…the math makes sense to me!  And we only ever walked 7 miles in a day, not 18!

8. "just keep pumping"
    After you have pumped the water filter 100,000 times receiving 3 drops of clean water, she will take it from you, push the hose another 0.0001mm, then fill the container with two pumps.

So, the water filter was not pumping water properly.  I told Gary to keep pumping while I finished making our little meals.  We were both tired and hungry from the day and I was kind of panicking when the water filter wouldn’t work…it was acting like there was an air bubble trapped inside.  I messed around with it for a few minutes and then realized that one of the mechanisms was loose.  I tightened it and that’s all it took to get the thing to suck up water instead of air.

9. "You have to eat all of this we can't leave any behind"
  Five pounds of oatmeal for breakfast? That should be enough.

So, after our first day of hiking, I knew I had to do 2 things:  make sure that Gary’s stomach was full to the brim and that he had plenty of water.  Otherwise, he would have been a crab all day.  For breakfast, I made eggs and he had oatmeal…there may have been a LOT of oatmeal, but I was trying to prevent the inevitable crabby pants from rearing its ugly head.  And even though North Manitou doesn’t really have any major wildlife, it’s just good practice not to dump left over food around campsites….otherwise, you will get critters and they will realize that the humans have the good stuff and tend to want to get into your things even more. But we managed to eat all of it!

10. "Let's go swimming in the lake"
     Naked and afraid ;-)

Lake Manitou - the inland lake

Our 2nd campsite at Lake Manitou

There was no nakedness and no one was afraid (maybe Gary was)!  Once we reached the lake and set up camp, we had some time to enjoy the refreshing water!  It was great.  There were a couple of groups of campers, but we were all spread out far enough that we didn’t really run into them.  The one group we encountered when we first got to the lake, they were a couple of campers smoking some strong weed.  We walked up on them, mid toke, as asked them where they were camping (not to join in, but just to avoid being near people).  They got all nervous and said that they were camping farther around the lake.  In another minute or so, they had packed up their stuff and headed out.  All I could think was, “Really guys? You are nervous about smoking pot…on an island… in the middle of Lake Michigan… around 2 people that haven’t showered in days?”

11. Bonus! "Huh... that's weird"
   Be prepared for all your toenails to turn purple and fall off:-)

This is a complete anomaly!  I don’t know what Gary did, but both of his big toe nails turned purple!  The only time I have even lost toe nails is when I was running longer distances.  All I could think of was that princess Gary didn’t have his nails trimmed low enough.  Poor Gary! Lol

On the last day, we hiked out of the woods and headed to the dock for pick-up at 10:30.  As we emerged from the forest, I saw the sign to the trail head.  I said, “Gary, you know what this sign says? Now “entering wilderness”.  Do you know what that means?”  He excitedly says, “Yes! It means we are exiting! Praise Jesus! “

The happiest I saw Gary all weekend, as we are exiting the woods

 Since it was Labor Day weekend, people were pouring out of the woods from all directions and heading to the docks.  We got there about 15 minutes before the boat was to arrive.  I guessed that there had to have been around 100 people waiting.  They were lined up on the dock from South to North….since when we got dropped off, we were dropped off at the South end of the dock.  Gary and I were way at the North end of the dock, and in fact more people were lined up along the dock that was the connector to the island.  All I could think was that there was no way that we were all getting on one boat. 

As we see the boat approach, I realize that it’s the small boat that normally travels to and from to NM.  I thought for sure we were screwed.  However, as the boat approached, it went to the North side of the dock!  For whatever reason, they decided to pick up on the North side.  We were so happy that we would be first on the boat, but then we felt a little guilty because of all the people that were going to be stuck there until the next boat arrived.  Only about 50-60 people got on that first boat and then they shoved off.  They never even announced to the rest of the hikers waiting that another boat was on its way!  The few lucky ones who made it on the first boat kind of joked that people would probably break out into riots seeing the boat pull away and not knowing that another was on its way. 

All of the hikers still waiting to get off the island

 We made it back to the mainland just fine, got our gear and headed back to the car.  Overall, I thought it was a successful hiking weekend.  I have my doubts though that Gary will ever trust to go hiking with me again!