Day Nine- to South Lake

Getting ready for another two days of backpacking. Diane fed us french toast and sausages for breakfast (early). We are living pretty high on the hog. Worst part of the morning was that it rained quite a bit during the night, but things looked like they were going to improve for the day.

It took three hours to spot the cars. Only 17 trail miles, but not many roads to connect them. Along the way, we had to do more tree clearing. Some sawing of limbs again (do we get paid by the road commission?), but one place there were chunks of a broken limb in the middle of the road. I hopped out to sling them off the side and discovered a small semi-casualty of the fallen limb.

It seemed to be only dazed, but barely able to fly, if at all yet. I think it's a chickadee. We moved it to the side and hope mama comes to find it.

This kind of landscape looks so much like northern Minnesota. Not a lot of places like this, but interesting.

This wetland seems to be on the way to becoming a bog with mats of sphagnum moss collecting on the surface.

A beautiful pitcher plant in full bloom.

Our main goal was to get past South Lake. This is a favorite spot of mine just because the bridge is so weird. It spans the lake, and it was damaged somehow in the past (ice?) so it's all at crazy angles. But it's sturdy, just slopey.

It was the weekend, and we saw some other hikers. Two were notable in that they seemed to not have a brain between them. They knew where they had started hiking (where we were headed), so I knew what trail they must have followed. (But they didn't know where they were hiking to.)

I asked them if they had crossed South Lake bridge. (It was less than a mile behind them). They had no clue. I ask you, "Is not that bridge memorable if you had just crossed it?" Anyway... we had hoped to stop for the night at West Canada Creek shelter. But the other hikers thought it was occupied.

So we were walking along trying to decide where we wanted to stay when this campsite appeared beside us. We had no problem making the instant decision to make it ours.

We only hiked 8 miles, but they were difficult. Lots of mud and rocks and a big climb. We were happy to eat dinner and crawl in the tents away from the bugs. However the weather was great. We are being smiled upon.

New York, Adirondacks, North Country Trail, Indian River TH to just past South Lake, 8 miles

See Being Flexible