Mosquitos, buzz buzz buzz!

Little Bird has done some excellent planning and local trail angel Butch picks us up at 7. We plan to slack 18 miles and then probably walk the road back to Rib Lake unless we get lucky hitch hitching again. It would make for a 20 mile day. We’re pretty sure we can do it with lighter packs and some road walking mixed in with the trail segments. Butch takes a look at us and says our plan is ambitious. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

The guidebook has a tendency to make the trail sound more intimidating than it really is. As it is we are done with our ‘ambitious’ hike before 4pm. Ha!

It starts with some nice scenery along woods lake. There are some interpretative signs which we try to read but the mosquitos are relentless and we end up snapping photos to read later.

In some spots the trail is a bit overgrown and obscure but it’s blazed well. We can see the vibrant yellow even if we are wearing our bug nets for most of the day.

We try to find a place for lunch where we can take the nets off but it’s slim pickings. Eventually we settle for a dirt road with a breeze. As long as the breeze stays we’re okay.

We have another cool porcupine sighting. This one is bigger and heads straight for a tree as he see us. Another interesting animal event was when a garter snake swam away from us. I didn’t know they could swim and he was creepily good at it.

The last part of the day has a roadwalk and it goes along a nice lake. Best part is, it’s breezy!! We sit down at the picnic table  and enjoy a snack.

Today was a good day to try out my new sun hoodie, I was hoping the bugs wouldn’t be able to bite through it and they can’t! Hurray!

We have about a half mile of trail left at the end and we think it’ll be a piece of cake. Haha. Joke’s on us! It’s ski trail and manages to climb steeply to a ridge. That packed a punch! I’m sweating and whining. I thought we picked the easy option!

We don’t even really try hitching and walk the 2 miles to town where we head straight for the restaurant across from the motel. The entire meal is microwaved, my garlic bread is steaming and too hot to handle. Hilarious. We still enjoy it since we’re hikers. Ambitious hikers!