Jay and I have our days off together on Wednesday. Usually we spend it with other people, but yesterday we thought it was time that we spent the day just with each other, so we decided to go for a hike along the Manistee River Trail in Manistee National Forest. Jay camped out there on his own a couple of years ago, and I backpacked the majority of the trail in 2002.
After a couple of false starts, we were on our way. We set a path and stopped for some trail food on the way to the trail head. Jay remembered the part of the trail that we were going to hike as being about a 10 mile round trip - easily done in a day because we were packing light.
It didn't go exactly as we had planned.
Our trip was scheduled to go to the dam and back, but to the dam actually ended up being more like 6 or 7 miles than the 5 we had anticipated. Also, it was really hot and muggy and we did not pack enough water for the conditions, so once we hit the dam we had to go another 1.3 miles to get to a clean water source. Once we had replenished the H2O, we had to turn around and rehike the entire thing to get back to the car. We lost the path for a portion of the way back, which was fine for Jay since he was wearing his heavy duty hiking boots, but I was in my Chacos (c'mon - it was only supposed to be 10 miles on a well worn path right?).
After 6 hours of hiking, with only 15 min. of breaking, we made it back to the car - quite possibly one of the best sites I have ever seen. We scarfed down the box lunches we had brought while the Jetta sufficiently handled the worlds bumpiest road on the way back to the highway. After sitting for the 45 min. drive back to camp, standing proved to be quite difficult, but after treating ourselves to ice cream and an early bed time I think it is safe to say we will survive.
These are the faces that we thought would sum up our trip well, and here is a shot of our feet after the hike - these small body parts held up pretty well for the distance we put them through
3 comments:
Good job guys! I probably would have cried. I don't do well with heat, fatigue, hunger, and lack-of-trail all at once.
Miss you!!!
It's odd how at the time Adventure is blasted uncomfortable and then makes the best stories ever over a bonfire with a nice drink in hand. And somehow turns into something that you want to do again.
It was good to look at the pix. I just smiled at you two for a great long moment. I really miss you.
And did I say that you have great chaco tan lines, Liz?
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