July 5, 2024

Leskinen Creek Campsite to stealth site

15.0 miles

Happily, it did not in fact rain last night like the original forecast said it would, and the morning is lovely and sunny. I take my sweet time waking up and drinking coffee and writing and before I know it, it’s after 8. Oops. We get packed up, chat a bit with Lisa and Abby, and finally roll out around 8:30.

The trail continues to be so nice. It is flat and not muddy and Machine and I walk along pleasantly taking in the morning. I explain to him how Lilly’s Island yesterday reminded me of a korok puzzle in Breath of the Wild, and this gets us talking about a video game about thru-hiking that someone could make called Triple Crown. It would be like a combination of Sims and Breath of the Wild: you’d have to keep your hiker alive and reasonably happy, you could make little meals at camp with combinations of things you buy in town, and you lose hearts if you miss something and have to go back. There would also be places where you could go to upgrade your setup and little side quests with spur trails. I get so lost in brainstorming this amazing game idea that soon almost two miles I’ve passed and we’re at what’s marked on Avenza as “huge glacial erratic.”Later on, through the wonders of Father Google, we learn that a glacial erratic is a rock deposited by a glacier that doesn’t match the bedrock or the surrounding area. Neat!

We walk over a beautiful boardwalk and then climb up to a vista at a rock for break time. I take entirely too much time having my second coffee but whatever, it’s delightful. We’re on the ridge for a while after that, and we pass Section 13, whatever that means, which has an absolutely gorgeous view to a rocky formation across the valley and to the surrounding mountains. I try to take a timed selfie of the two of us with my phone, but it turns out terrible, so Machine takes over and his version is way better.

We descend again, cross a road, and climb up again. We’re not far away from lunch, which we plan to have at a place called Picnic Rock, whatever that is. But when we get to the place where it looks, on the map, like Picnic Rock should be, it turns out to be a funky side trail. There are a few other hikers ahead of us who are taking the trail and from their struggles we decide to just keep hiking and see if we can get to it from the trail itself. We can’t, but we do come across Sawmill Dome, which is an excellent lunch spot because its rocky, has a great view, and is sort of tiered so that the rocks can serve as a back rest. It’s like a little bench! As we eat, we watch a thunderstorm roll across the hill on the other side of the valley. It doesn’t come our way though; it’s still sunny skies on this side.

In the afternoon, it seems as though the storm has in fact reached us, or a different cloud has anyway, because it starts drizzling and then full-on raining. I am listening to the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude and slowly going fuzzy in the brain as I enter the endless liminal state of Gabriel García Márquez while it starts raining harder in real life just as the giant storm rolls in at the end of the book.

The trail gets kind of gross, with slippery rocks and mud and overgrown plants competing for space. I feel really weak all of a sudden so I pull over on a terrible bench and have a snack before finally acquiescing to the rain and donning my poncho. The climb ends, and I finally finish the novel with its powerful last line and damn, it hits me again what a great and strange book this is. I have all these ideas for how we’re going to discuss character, structure, and symbols when AP Lit starts up again. Nerd.

Some bog boards, a road crossing, and then we are officially in Tettegouche State Park. There is a trail reroute here because of a downed bridge, so the mile marker we thought we would be ending at turns out to be farther down. We continue on the wide, slippery trail down towards the bridge over the Baptism River, cross it, get confused, ogle at the amazing mouth of the river as it meets the lake, and then end up at the State Park Visitor’s Center. The Center itself is closed by this point but the bathrooms are not, and there are functional vending machines and a water bottle filling station. And trash cans! Bless! We hardly know what to do first, but we end up with fresh water, clean hands, emptied trash bags, two cans of root beer, and a bag of Cheez-Its that taste like salty processed heaven. By now the sun has come back out and everything is glowing and feels like it’s going to be okay.

We cook dinner at a picnic table and Machine calls the State Park help line to see if there are spots at the Lake Superior Cart-In campground where we plan to stay the night. There are none, not there or at any other park campground. It’s a holiday weekend and we underestimated the popularity of this park. Shoot.

We finish dinner, use the facilities again, and start walking up the road that is the reroute hoping to find a stealth spot. It’s not technically allowed on the SHT, but we don’t have much choice, given that the next campsite is miles away and it’s not far from dark. We wind up setting up camp on a snowmobile road that is marginally flat and very full of both mosquitoes and slugs. I throw my tent together as fast as I can and dive in to escape the winged demons. Then, when I look out and see two slugs crawling all over my socks within moments of placing them on top of my shoes, my brain enters the horrible place where I imagine sticking my feet into slug-infested Topos in the morning and putting on slug-covered Tevas in the night. I gag slightly as I shake off the slugs from my socks and bring them and my (mercifully as of yet slugless) shoes inside, followed by my Kula cloth. It is not going to be a great night of sleep, but hopefully we will at least be able to get some rest before our nero into town tomorrow.