Running Wild for the Detroit Zoo

Today the whole fam went out to the Detroit Zoo for the annual "Run Wild" race — a benefit for the zoo sponsored by LaSalle Bank. Our friends the Talberts came too. The dads and kids did the one-mile family walk, Sue did the 5K, and I did the 10K. It was my first time doing that great of a distance — I mean, I've run that far a handful of times at Hudson Mills and around my neighborhood and stuff, but never in an official timed event. This first picture is Sue and I after we were done. For the record, we are glowing in this photo, not perspiring.

It felt good to conquer 6.2 miles, but before you get all impressed, let me just tell you I was pretty darn slow. I'd done the 5K at the zoo a couple years ago at 28:44 (yeah, I was slow then too!) so I thought I should be able to run the 10K in about double the time. But I ended up clocking in at a little over that, at 1:01:17. Hey, I'm getting older! I'm actually pretty impressed with myself for keeping my pace at just under 10 minutes per mile. Regardless of my speed — or lack thereof — it was a fun day and it certainly gave me a good reason to get up off my arse these last several weeks.

Plus the post-race party is a lot of fun. There's food and entertainment, and you get to hang out at the zoo for as long as you want. Here are a few shots from our afternoon:

Porcupine Mountains, Day 5

So today our trip has ended. It was a lovely string of days that I think we'll all remember for a long time. Jay took a few parting photos of his handiwork - he spent part of his week making a log bench for the little fire ring in front of our cabin.


And, aided by an underage work crew of four cheerful rock haulers, he also engineered and built this very cool little stone entry at the base of our cabin steps. It would be fun to come back here in a few years and see if it's still here, or if some other hikers have added to it.


So off we go down the trail and, after a week of eating only backpacker food, we all have visions of yummy food in our heads. Maria, of course has her affections set on broccoli cheddar soup. Jay and Pete are envisioning anything besides black beans and beef stroganoff, respectively, since that's pretty much the only thing Cindy and I fed them all week.

Goodbye to our Porkies and our amazing Lake Superior!

Porcupine Mountains, Day 4

Today was our biggest hiking day. We set out early enough to tackle an eight-mile day, the destination being Trapper's Falls for lunch. It was a big undertaking, and we weren't at all sure how the kids would do. They all did great, but I was especially proud of Maria. She started out pretty surly this morning and didn't have much good to say about today's adventure, but she must've reached down deep and found some gumption, because she bucked up and made it through the day beautifully - smiling, even! Her main coping tactic was to chant, "BROCCOLI CHEDDAR SOUP! IN A BREAD BOWL!" as she marched down the trail. That's her favorite menu item at Panera, and she decided that her reward for muscling through today should be a huge lunch at the first Panera we see when we head home tomorrow.

The falls were really beautiful - mainly made up of two or three huge slabs of gently sloping rock with shallow water flowing over them. Because of the low rainfall here lately, much of the rock was more exposed than usual, and it made it fun and easy to explore. We lunched, lounged, played, and chased a frog before heading back to the cabins.




















When we got back from our hike, Pete and Cindy's cabin stunk to high heaven. After some investigation we learned that one of the mousetraps in the cabin (each have several, to keep the mouse population under control) contained a sizeable specimen who apparently had been there for a few days. Pew.

We've had no trouble with mice in our cabin, though we've heard some scratching in the walls at night. I think having Buster in the cabin keeps other critters at bay.

Porcupine Mountains, Day 3

Today was a lounge day. We mostly hung around the cabins - just reading, playing, and fishing. Still no fish, but that's not deterring the kids a bit.

One of the rocks on which the Carp River bridge is built has a geological marker on it. The U.S. Geological Survey places these markers all over the country - sometimes in absurdly remote places - and then measures their position periodically to determine degrees of movement. Kind of cool.


The bravest among us (read: the kids) went swimming in the river, which to my body feels like about 32.1 degrees. I did go in for a nanosecond after much cajoling from Joe and Maria, but only to rinse off; I was back out and in dry clothes within minutes! The big splash in this picture is Joe doing a cannonball.


... And here's Matt ...

Spent some nice time in the afternoon and evening just hanging out at the beach. The first shot here is Maria and Hannah, enjoying the view of Lake Superior.







We decided it had rained plenty hard yesterday to qualify us for a campfire, so we had a lovely one this evening, and then ended the day with another sunset.

Porcupine Mountains, Day 2

We decided to do a little lunchtime hike today to a place called Shining Cloud Falls. Except the clouds weren't exactly shining; in fact, on our return hike, they produced quite a bit of precipitation. But here's how cool the four kiddos are: they thought the rain made the hike more fun. Can you beat that? I think they realized that a big downpour could mean we'd cash in on the ranger's statement from yesterday, when he said that we could have a campfire if the surrounding woods first got a good soaking.

The falls were really pretty, and though we hung out there for quite a while, we somehow didn't take any photos of the falls themselves! But Maria and Hannah amused themselves snapping photos of each other, and here is a sample of the result.




Jay found a very righteous-looking stick on the banks of the river, which he and the kids named "the staff of Gondor" after the kingdom in The Lord of the Rings. Here is Matt displaying it. Click it for a close-up - you'll swear the top of the stick is actually a deer antler.





During our break, Matt and Joe busied themselves with one of their favorite activities: moving rocks around. Hey, who needs Nintendo when you can play with rocks?

The rest of us, including Buster, just hung out and relaxed. Here's a shot of me with my dingo, just downstream from the falls.
Luckily the rain held off till we were done eating lunch. Jay snapped this kinda cool photo of the rocks on the edge of the falls, just as it started sprinkling and we were preparing to head back.

Once we got back to our cabins, it was pouring, so we hunkered down and listened to the rain and I read aloud from Harry Potter for a while. Here was part of my audience.



It wasn't too long before the skies cleared a bit, so the kids ran out to the bridge near our cabin and commenced fishing from the Big Carp River, which unfortunately produced no big carps or any other kind of fish. But at least it was entertaining!



While the kids fished, Jay got all manly with an axe and firewood. The axe, incidentally, was in the cabin when we arrived... it's not part of the gear we would normally schlep miles into the woods.



By evening, the weather had cleared enough to provide us with a beautiful view of the sunset over Lake Superior.

Porcupine Mountains, Day 1

The Brooks fam made it to the Porkies, amazed that we can drive ten and a half hours from home and still be in the state of Michigan. Boggles the mind. We're in the U.P., almost to Wisconsin, where you see the red pin in this map.

We met Pete, Cindy, Matt, and Hannah last night in Silver City, and this morning after filling the kids up on waffles and yogurt, we hit the Pinkerton Trail, off of South Boundary Road in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We had a four and a half mile hike ahead of us. The kids were awesome! About a third of the way there, we took a break at Pinkerton Creek and as the kids frolicked on the banks of the creek, I heard Matthew say to Joe, "This just gets funner and funner!"




The kids are each carrying between 15 and 20 pounds of weight. Jay and I have about 35 pounds apiece, and Buster's doing his part by carring about 5.5 pounds (comprised mainly of dog food and our first aid kit).



The record-setter of the group, though, is Pete who, in addition to the usual stuff a dad would carry in his pack, is toting along a 50-pound car battery. Yes, fifty. That's five zero. Cindy estimates his total pack weight to be around 80 or 90 pounds. (He declined to weigh it prior to leaving their house - some things, it's just better not to know!) The next two photos show Pete and Cindy after a short break about two miles in, getting ready to conquer the rest of our hike. If you click on the first shot for a close-up, you'll find that Pete's expression says it all. ☺



Why carry a car battery, you ask? No, he's not training for a strongman contest. He needs a sleep-apnea mask at night to regulate his breathing, and the mask requires power. Of which there is none here. Without the mask, his sleep is constantly disrupted and he gets terrible migraines the next day. And we decided early on that migraines would not be allowed on this trip. So the car battery was the only way he could ensure power for the mask for four nights. Crazy, huh?

It's amazing to be staying right on the shore of Lake Superior (or Gitchee-Gumee, as it's called in the Ojibwa language). Superior has always seemed so powerful, mysterious, beautiful. Cindy tells me it's her favorite Great Lake. Our cabin's situated right where the Big Carp River empties into Superior. Pete and Cindy's cabin is just across the river.

This afternoon we were sitting on the wooden bridge over the river and were startled by some very energetic waterfowl that came flapping and splashing down the river, half-flying, half-running across the water, making their way under the bridge and out to Lake Superior. They are really cool-looking ducks - the way they dive under the water for food makes them almost resemble penguins. We found out later they're called Common Mergansers. They come through in groups, several times a day, and they're quite entertaining to watch. The kids helpfully yell "DUCK! DUCK! DUCK!" when they see a group of them approaching, so that we can run over and watch them pass.

We were sad to learn that we couldn't have a campfire tonight because it has been so terribly dry here all summer. There have been widespread forest fires east of here, in the central part of the U.P. So we improvised and ended our day with s'mores over the Pocket Rocket tonight. The kids are hopeful, though, because before we started hiking today, a ranger told us that if we get a good heavy rain in the next couple days, we'd be fine to have a small fire. This might be the first time I've ever hoped for rain on a backpacking trip.

A.T. Hike, Spring 2007 - Day 6,In Which I Said Goodbye to the Trail Till Next Time

Hogback Ridge Shelter to Sams Gap

Well, after six days on the trail, I and everything I’m wearing smell like Buster after he’s rolled around in the grass on a rainy day. It’s pretty disgusting.

Since today’s hike was short and sweet with very few big vistas, I snapped several pictures of the flowers that decorate the mountains. Spring is such an amazing time to be in this part of the country. I have always been an abysmal gardener, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the wild beauty of flowers like these.

This one has the unfortunate name of spider wort, which in my mind detracts quite a bit from its splendor. I think it deserves a much daintier name, don’t you?

This is my favorite: mountain laurel. These grow on trees and their blooms drop to the ground in early June; in fact, many trees this week had already lost all their flowers, and some parts of the trail were covered in white because of it. It felt wrong to walk on something so exquisite. The blooms are so lovely and delicate, they look like they belong on a wedding cake. Even the underside of each flower is intricate and perfect.

Here’s something called a flame azalea, also known as rhododendron. They come in other colors too, but the orange ones were really plentiful this week. In some spots, these bushes surround the trail on the left and right, with their branches having grown together about 10 feet above you, forming a sort of tunnel to walk through.

This one’s a firepink. Aren’t those petals cool? I love their shape.

I’m a little embarrassed to say that when I finally neared Sams Gap, where the A.T. intersects with a paved interstate at a trailhead parking area, I actually let out a primitive little whoop when I saw my car. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of that rusty little Altima as beautiful until today. I love the trail, but I also love leaving it after this many days. So I said goodbye to the A.T. till probably this fall.

As of today, I have 314.4 miles down, 1,855.6 to go!