Teeny's First Overnight - Day 1

 
Yesterday, Teeny and I left Sawdust Hole, headed for Eddington Creek. Dispersed camping is still allowed in the Manistee National Forest, so our trip was completely legal.

It was cloudy all day (and never warmed up, either). The gray skies made this reflection in Leitch Bayou more of a monotone study.


Eddington Creek is 14 miles from the parking at Sawdust Hole. And those are the 14 hilliest miles in all of the Manistee NF on the North Country Trail. So this was another challenge- to do that many miles for two days in a row, and have them be tough miles. But I love how the trail tracks along the edges of the hills. The trail is on the far left of this picture, benched into the hillside. The farthest blue line of horizon on the right is on the other side of the river.



It was so gray this picture is hardly worth showing you, but you can see the Manistee River down in the valley, and the line of blue hills on the other side.



There were a few neat details. Last year's turkey tail fungus.



And some patches of moss are almost fluorescent green.



This was my destination, Eddington Creek Bridge. That's because it's the only water source in that entire stretch of trail. I arrived there a couple of minutes before 6 pm. That was perfect. I didn't want to get there very early because I knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant evening to be sitting outside.



Set up camp, cooked dinner, hung my food bag, filtered water. Not only was it cold, it started raining! Not very much but enough to send me scurrying into the tent. I read a book until it got too dark to see. Didn't get very much sleep. I am not very happy with my "new" (1 year old) sleeping bag. More on that in another post. I had a lot of trouble staying warm.



Teeny did her job well. I'm getting used to the pockets and what to keep where. The biggest glitch was that I didn't get one snack bar in the food cache. It was hiding in a pocket and spent the night in the tent with me. But I had no midnight visitors.

And now, we'll jump ahead to tonight. Obviously, I made it home safely, and we had Birthday Pizza! Thanks, Om!



I think early bed is going to be a thing. 28 miles in 2 days with little sleep is giving me the nods. Tomorrow I'll show you day two. Sure it was a return over the same miles, but it was a different day, and I saw different things.

See Birthday Shenanigans