Trip reports – Page 2 – Third Coast Hikes

Urban hikes: Februray 9 snowstorm

In Chicago we just had our first major snowfall of the season. We were predicted to receive 8-14 inches over about 24 hours, thankfully it was probably closer to 9. Don’t worry, they’re calling for more over the next couple of days. I worked from home on Friday, rather than clog the transit system with needless ridership, and CPS cancelled schools. Snow days are cool as an adult because everyone is forced to slow down a lot. Strangers help push stuck cars out of parking spots, drone photographers want you to know that the kids are sledding down the hill in Humboldt Park (good!) I grabbed my camera on my lunch break – and again after work – and sought to document the aftermath of the storm. During my lunch hour I walked to Armitage Produce, to pick up provisions so I could be successfully snowed in all weekend. After work, I had planned to walk from my apartment near Humboldt Boulevard to my dry cleaner’s on Western, pick up my dry cleaning, and take the bus back. When I got to the bus stop I had just missed the bus and another one wouldn’t be coming for another 20 minutes. It takes about 20 minutes to walk home from Western, so I wound up walking the whole way and back. Through that much snow, it really did feel like a hike.

Here’s the funny thing about walking down the sidewalk with 7-9 inches of fresh snow on them, it’s treacherous. Most people and businesses where I live in Logan Square are pretty good about keeping the sidewalks shoveled. The auto shop behind my house even contracts with a guy with a fourwheeler to clear the snow in the alley. But lots of sidewalks go unshoveled, whether because the property owners are jerks or too old or too sick, whatever. Curbs don’t drain sufficiently and dark, muddy puddles of mysterious depth are the greatest danger to dry feet out there. You’ve got to pay careful attention to your footing, it’s not fundamentally different than climbing up a rocky terrain (like in Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin!)

Urban hikes are different than nature hikes in obvious ways, but it’s foolish to discount one because it’s not natural or remote. True, the only wildlife you’re likely to see are pigeons, rats, other people, dogs and trains, but they’re wild and lively nonetheless. I like to think of the streetscape as exactly as worthy of discovery as natural landscapes. The Subway in Zion might be the hike of a lifetime (and it probably is) but every day the underside of the L tracks change every day, and every day I get to see those changes. I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to think of the Tastee Freeze as a destination hike in the same sense that Jackson Falls in the Shawnee Forest is a destination. They’re both beautiful, they both welcome everyone, and there is a time of the year when they are the more exciting to see, and a time of the year when they dry up. (Both are best in the spring.)

Urban hikes are great, you just have to learn to appreciate where you are and what’s going on.

Camp Thunderbird Day 1: Chicago to Wells State Park

J.W. Wells State Park
Where we stayed: Site 152, rustic, no electricity, drive-in, with a gorgeous view of Green Bay, sunny in the morning
Good for: Families, couples, RVs, car camping, cabins
Not great for: Backpacking, solitude
Pros: Views, campfires, great tasting water, clean vault toilet
Cons: Sites can be close together, which is only a bother if your neighbors are noisy
Website
Reservations

Day 1

The first leg of the trip took us from our apartment in Chicago to Wells State Park, in Michigan, just barely in the Upper Peninsula. The major purpose in planning this whole trip was to get some real unsupported backpacking experience, where we walk away from our car and we’re obligated by circumstance to care for ourselves. Neither of us had ever been to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, but it was only an 8 hour drive, it looked gorgeous and that early in the season it was unlikely to be overrun by other campers and hikers.

So, the thought process went, as long as it was going to be an 8 hour drive up I-43 then up further still to the top of the Upper Peninsula, we might as well break it into two days. Then, as long as we’re going to the top of the UP, we might as well come down the other side since it wouldn’t take more than a few hours longer and it sounded like fun. Maybe take an extra day or two in the mitten and meander your way back home. Ipso facto – that’s how you plan a Circle Tour.

So over five days we planned to camp all over Michigan including:

Wells State Park, Site 152, facing Green Bay, water pump adjacent
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Sevenmile Creek campground
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Au Sable East campground
Cheboygan State Park, Site 48, adjacent to Lake Huron
Ludington State Park, Jackpines Site J

We took off from our apartment in Logan Square around 10 a.m. Friday morning. We planned to take a fairly leisurely drive north up to Wells. We did stop for provisions of cheese, beer, wine and sausage at the venerable Mars Cheese Castle. We had lunch at some tavern near Kohler, Wisconsin and we probably arrived at Wells around 6 p.m. with two and a half hours of daylight to burn.

The whole journey was a mix of car camping and backpacking and I think that was a great way for a couple of noobs to get acclimated. The campsite at Wells State Park had a sizable fire pit, Green Bay’s waters were smooth as glass that day, we were unable to see another soul from our site, the vault toilets were quite clean and drinking water was plentiful and easily available from the adjacent water pump. We put our tent down on a flat piece of grass probably only 20 feet from the lake.

Wells State Park was a make work camp created by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Roosevelt administration, and you can still book one of the cabins they built if you so choose. The hand pump was very likely installed by the same team way back then. Last May when we were there it was simply covered with midges but if you’re not grossed out by that it’s fine. The water did not directly encounter any wildlife as it made its way from the pipe to my nalgene, so I wasn’t bothered. One thing I will say for the water at Wells State Park is that it tastes absolutely delicious. I grew up with well water, it tastes great to me. This particular well had a crisp mineral-y taste. I made sure to refill my bottle once more before we left in the morning and then I forgot about it until after we came back at the end of the Pictured Rocks leg of the excursion. Which was an excellent surprise that I left for me.

The first thing we did was set up camp. I assembled the tent while Dave built the fire. We had picked up a bottle of one of Wisconsin’s freshest strawberry wines at the Mars Cheese Castle. After the tent was assembled we tied one end of the string to the neck of the bottle and the other end to a rock. We then placed the bottle end into Green Bay and I wandered off to take pictures.

The skies were overcast that day, but the temperatures were warm enough and we weren’t in danger of any rain. The lake looked like an upside down version of Sky above Clouds IV by Georgia O’Keefe. Nature is amazing, you guys. I think at one point I probably sat on a rock in the lake near the shore, just staring at birds for the better part of an hour. Dave created firewood out of downed trees with a pocket saw. Before the sun set we pulled the lukewarm wine out of the lake and drank it from our cups. Why tin cups? Because camping is fun, that’s why.

I woke up early to see the sunrise the next morning. Having snapped a photo, I returned to the tent and snoozed until it was a more decent hour. That was probably a dumb idea, but whatever. We packed up camp, made coffee, assembled our backpacks so we wouldn’t have to do any additional futzing when we got to Pictured Rocks, cleaned our campsite, turned the keys in the ignition and … nothing happened.

The Thunderbird is a 23-year-old, reliable beast of a machine. I’d recently taken it for major maintenance including new tires, brakes, wheel balance and a whole bunch of fluid refreshers. The battery and the starter were both new. What the hell? A nice couple of retirees towing an RV behind their dually was kind enough to give us a jump. Once a pair of cables were attached to the battery it was pretty clear it wasn’t dead, it just needed help getting started. Either way, I had a 2 p.m. appointment at Twelvemile Creek (two and a half hours away) with a public shuttle service in Pictured Rocks, making this a problem for later. The car now in motion, we sped out of the park and were promptly pulled over by the Michigan State Police. Did I know the truck in front of me with the Illinois plates, he asked? No sir, I do not know that person. Okay here’s your voucher, get on your way, ma’am. Thank you, officer.

We were now in real danger of missing our appointment with Altran, the public shuttle service that operates within Pictured Rocks. Ensuring that I stayed within the legal limit for speeding, I engaged all eight cylinders and headed north across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Click here for Day 2: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Twelvemile to Sevenmile Creek

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Trip Report: Shawnee National Forest, August 19-21, 2017

I had the eclipse marked on my calendar probably 8 months in advance, but as the date grew closer I wavered on making the drive. Work was getting crazy, and the car definitely needed to be fixed before I wanted to take it on a six hour road trip. Dave never wavered though. I never heard the kind of wishy-washing that takes place before you take time off to travel to a wedding or to a family reunion. Dave was resolved to go one way or the other. So we went.

The National Park Service seemed more or less to suspend its rules for that weekend. The Shawnee National Forest, located at the southern tip of Illinois, opened campsites that had been closed for years to accommodate the influx of people but even still they were not taking reservations. All sites were first-come-first-serve. We had the advantage of being able to backpack in, which means our camping options were both more numerous and more private than many other campers would be able to enjoy that weekend. We did very little planning beyond deciding to get on the road around 6 a.m. Saturday, which should theoretically put us in Vienna, IL around noon. Which is plenty of time to hike around, find and set up camp.

The park service was not specifically advising people to go to Jackson Falls, so we hoped it would be a more private, secluded long weekend than we might find if we went to Garden of the Gods or other higher trafficked areas. We were probably right. We also made this plan expecting Jackson Falls to have plenty of water – which we learned was a mistake. The falls are dry in August, which we might have learned if we did any advance research. Which we did not.

We hiked about a mile into the park before we came to a rock slide that allowed you to descend into the canyon. When we got to the bottom we ate lunch (cheese, sausage and cherry tomatoes). Other hikers told us we could find water a little further into the canyon, the falls were dry but flowing water is hard to stop any time of year. After about another 15 minutes walking, we did find plenty of creek water. Not exactly flowing, but viable. That night we camped at the bottom of the canyon and heated a dinner of canned chili and minute rice on a fire we built on the dry riverbed.

The canyon at Jackson Falls is very popular with rock climbers. There are sandstone bluffs rise that about 60 feet above the floor and its several degrees cooler at the bottom than on the ridge. Not an unpleasant way to spend a night in Southern Illinois in August. We did move up to the ridge the following night for a couple of reasons, though.

We could. We have the backpacks. We can move wherever we like.
The air was somewhat stagnant at the bottom, which meant stagnant air in the tent.
Sick of walking into spider webs. Orb weavers are EVERYWHERE this time of year. Not poisonous or harmful, but so squicky.

We did some recon the next morning and headed up to the top of the ridge to scout out camping locations before we dragged all of our stuff along with us. We found a relatively flat spot within line of sight of a group of climbers and just a short walk down the path from a big open field. The woods are amazing, and all, but we came here to watch the moon block out the sun and you can’t see that under the canopy.

Dave and I descended back into the canyon and I toted water while he broke camp. We packed up and realized we had absolutely no idea how to get back up to the top with heavy bags. We could take the rock slide we came down, but honestly that sounded kind of scary with 30 pounds strapped to your back. Other hikers had told us about a second entrance close to the falls, so we headed in that direction and started asking people. When we finally did find it, we realized this wasn’t going to be any easier with heavy packs on, so we passed the packs up instead.

It was probably another mile hike from there to our scouted spot, and at this point I think we were both more tired than we expected. The temperatures were in the 90s with high humidity, I think Dave melted a little. We did take a stroll through the open prairie. The grass had been cleared to create a fire access road, but it was also full of some gorgeous plants and dozens of kinds of butterflies. Camping at the top of the ridge was warmer, but the breeze helped mitigate that. We basically made dinner (Aldi canned chicken and Knorr Spanish rice), watched the sunset from behind the trees and went to sleep shortly after it got dark.

The next morning was the day of the eclipse. We were camping less than 500 feet from all the open skies we would need plus we had sunscreen and extra eclipse glasses. I descended back into the canyon to fill our water reservoirs while Dave packed up camp. When I got back to the top we ate granola bars, and waited the show to begin.

A total eclipse of the sun is a dictionary-definition awesome thing. Dave and I stared at the sun for almost three hours (with appropriate protective eyewear, guys, don’t be a dummy). Shortly before totality, the light became decidedly weird. Birds all hushed themselves when it got dark, and for two and a half minutes in the middle of the afternoon, cicadas and crickets started singing. The sun, which shortly before was an orange crescent, was suddenly a black circle with silver light misting around it. As the moon moved on, the orange crescent returned, this time in reverse. Birds started singing but this time it was the high, fast ups and downs of morning songs. I hope they weren’t too upset when the sun set again six hours later. If you have the chance to see it from the path of totality again in 2024, I recommend you do it.

We left the park around 3:30 p.m., headed for the nearest gas station to buy Gatorade and salty snacks and wash three days of camp off of my hands. We refilled our water bladders with that really good fountain machine crushed ice and water (perfection) and headed north on I-57, which was a terrible mistake.

It took us the next 16 hours to travel from Vienna, Illinois back to Chicago. We hit the highway around 4 p.m. and didn’t get back home until 8 a.m. the following morning. I have some pretty brash opinions on this cluster, but you know what? The whole trip was still completely worth it. Totality was amazing. Building a campfire on a dry riverbed was delightful. Nothing makes sense more than the woods, so I won’t let the worst traffic jam of my life ruin what was an amazing experience. Honestly, I don’t think there was much we could have done to avoid it aside from staying an extra day. Next eclipse, though, I’m crashing with my sister in Cleveland.