Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Michigan NCT Day 2: Grand Marais to Coves Campsites

May 27, 2017

Ideally, to an orderly, logical person like me, we'd section-hike the NCT in some sequence. (Although section-hiking means you can hike sections of the trail in any order.) But that's not what's happening here, due to a variety of factors. 

What that means for our hike today is that we again headed west, this time from Grand Marais about 25 miles through the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and into Beaver Basin Wilderness. 

We were told the path through Pictured Rocks was perfectly signed. Um … not quite. Blue blazes are the sign for the North Country Trail. But in Pictured Rocks, there are wooden sign posts for the trail at the intersection of the trail with major points of interest, but not one blaze otherwise. Okay, that's not too difficult to figure out.

But at the very end of our long, 26-mile day, we were looking for Coves Campsites, from which we'd take a connector trail back to our car. Coves was right after Beaver Creek Campsites, but in between were a wealth of side trails around Beaver Lake. Suffice it to say we never found the path we were looking for, and were told by several others that they found all of the signage confusing. We ended up hiking an extra 2-3 miles, which was tough.


But that's life on the trail! The scenery was gorgeous and we had an excellent day.

Snowshoe and Cheese Ed






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