Adventures on Day 2

If you thought taking down camp, hiking 3+ miles across an island, and setting up camp again is a lot to do in a day, you are mistaken!  You should take a little day hike after lunch, like we did!  But you should hope that your day hike doesn't last as long as ours did...

We passed a beautiful lake...on an island...on a lake!

We made it to the old growth cedars.  While most of Manitou Island was logged, this one section of the island wasn't, and there are lots of HUGE cedar trees.  Day trippers can take a wagon ride to this part of the island, hence the boardwalk to protect the cedar roots.

This one is called Mr. Knotty

I think this was the biggest one

There were lots of roadblocks.  There was a huge wind storm a few weeks prior, with massive damage to the mainland.  I went around the fallen trees, but...

Megan, Chris, and Jessica went OVER!

Now hiking to see the perched dunes

The trail started going straight up...

Then all of a sudden we were above all of the trees of the island!

It was hazy, but can you see the Sleeping Bear Dunes?  That's Michigan! We were sooo high!

Hiking the perched dunes

It was like being on another planet...so gorgeous...so desolate

This is looking across the entire island, back towards Michigan.  See it?

We ran into a family eating lunch up on the dunes, and the nice mom took our picture.  But her thumb is in all of the pictures.

We decided to go to the edge

So close...

We made it!  This is looking out towards Wisconsin

More exploring the dunes

Then I had the great idea to go DOWN the dunes, and walk the lakeshore back to our campsite.  It can't be far, right????

Time to change.  The girls were prepared with their swimsuits on, and flips packed in Chris' pack.



I think it was a little cold!

My beauties

Let's walk around the island!  It'll be fun!  Look how flat and easy this is!

Looking up at the dunes

Meg on a rock

Still beautiful, but getting rockier...and waves getting higher...

Looking back.  Isn't this so beautiful?!?

Getting close to a shipwreck!  Can you see it in the water?

Hiking is getting a little bit more tricky on this side.  Not much beach.  The scrub was full of poison ivy and snakes.  But we were so close to the shipwreck we kept on going!

Then we hit a patch of quicksand.  It pulled the girls' feet right down in a few spots!

Playing in quicksand

Katie found a praying mantis

Snack time by the shipwreck

Almond butter on tortillas for snack.  Isn't this a cool view??!!

Waves are building...

Can you see the dead trees to the top left?  They were covered in birds.

Dead cormorant.  We saw lots.  I think it was a sign.  (really it was just botulism)

This is where it really started getting hairy.  This side of the shore got hit with the really bad windstorm, and waves knocked over a lot of trees.  The only way around them was to go in the lake.  Well, I was barefoot, Jessi had a broken flip so one of her feet was barefoot, the waves were getting higher, the rocks kept hitting our feet and ankles....yes, I thought we were going to get swept out to sea.  I don't have any pictures of the worst parts over the next hour of hiking, b/c I had to put my phone in Chris' pack and pray that he didn't go under!

Getting a little better, we are close to our campsite now

Can you believe that we FOUND a pair of flip flops for me, washed up on shore by a dead cormorant??!  They actually weren't too close to each other, but Meg found them both.  I had shoes for the last part of the trip!  Hooray!

We made it back, exhausted, cold, and wet.  Chris figured out short little day hike was at least 5-6 miles!  Oops!

Filtering water for dinner

Katie found a monarch caterpillar

We used a bandana to fix up Jessi's flip-flop

Dinner at long last!  We had tortilla soup and beans and rice.

It was really windy at our site (in the background), so we moved our kitchen over to the common firepit, which no one used while we were there.  It was a bit more sheltered.

That night we played cards in our tents again.  It was really cloudy, so there was no sunset, and it was too windy to hang out outside for long.  We were all exhausted from our little adventure, so we slept like logs!  The minibears (aka chipmunks) had a field day while we slept.