May 28, 2017
Because we lost our shuttle at the last minute, we
realized it would be most efficient to keep hiking westbound. Sort of
backwards. We'd drop one car at the western end of our hike, then drive to the
eastern end and hike back to the one car. Then drive forward and on to our next
lodging.
Today we drove to Muskellonge Lake, ready to hike west
back to the spot just east of Grand Marais where we began on Friday. We had heard from trail folks that
there has been a lot of erosion along the lakeshore bluffs. This is where the
trail often runs, and thus the path disappears in spots wherever a chunk of the
bluff erodes completely. The long-term plan is to move the trail about 100 feet
(or yards?) in from the bluffs, but for now there are rudimentary detours.
The spot where we were hiking today wasn't yet cleaned up
for the season, so we were warned the path might be lost/eroded away in spots.
We started off from the Muskellonge Lake State Park in high spirits. We were
going to do this! Well … ha!
We did follow the path very well for the most
part, but there was one spot where the trail was eroded away and there happened
to be a path back to the road, which was what the map showed. To make a long
story short, we headed to the road, walked back and forth a bit, then went back
up into the woods and discovered we had to hike past/around the eroded spot a short distance to
pick up the real path back to the road.
All of the back-and-forth cost us about 3 miles, or an hour's hiking. In the midst of this, I must add, it started to rain.
We had another snafu a few hours later, in an area with
logging activity. We haven't had a chance to ask locals about this yet, but
lots of the logged areas are marked in blue, with blue paint on the trees and
blue ribbons hanging from some branches. This is extremely confusing, as you
often can't tell if this is NCT markings or logging. So we lost more time in
one trail segment due to this.
But all is good. Tonight we are staying in a man's rental home,
which is designed like a caboose. It's quite charming.
Snowshoe and Cheese Ed
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