June 18, 2016 Daisy Farm to Moskey Basin

On Saturday we began with morning yoga:

Then we took our time packing up (Ok, let's be honest. We aren't very good at packing yet!).
We ended up leaving Daisy Farm around 3:30pm to hike to Moskey Basin, about 3.9 miles.

We made it there in plenty of time to cook dinner and set up camp in one of the shelters.

While we were eating, Shelly the turtle came to visit us. We think she was used to getting food from people since she was so friendly, but we followed the rules and didn't feed her.

Gavin and Lillia started a snail collection and had fun watching them in the little pool by our shelter. 

Jared and Gavin had some trouble fishing and kept catching rocks! (No pictures of this one.)

We saw some loons swim by and Gavin found a stick that looked a bit like a loon!

And, of course, no day is complete without a singing and dancing show!

At night, we were worried that our shelter wouldn't be rain proof because the roof looked a little shabby. So we hung up our rain covers inside of the tent and bagged all of our backpacks to be safe.

It turns out, it never even rained! When we finally settled down for bed, I caught a glimpse of the biggest spider I have ever seen in real life. I turned my head to whisper to Victor, but when I turned back, it was gone. I tried to play it cool and not let the kids know about it. Finally, Jared spotted it when he was looking for something else and he was able to keep an eye on it while Victor got a shoe to kill the gigantic monster! Here's the carcass!

Glad we killed that monstrosity before it attacked us at night!!

I don't generally appreciate writings on the walls of the shelters, but here is one of my favorites that we saw this week:

June 17, Not for the weak!

Friday, June 17th

When we left the hotel this morning (late, as usual!), we realized that we needed to celebrate Alisia's birthday before we got on the boat. She's trying to figure out what her gift is:


Then we told her that it was a bracelet made of guitar strings and when we got home, we would buy her a guitar.

We arrived at the boat with at least 5 minutes to spare and begun our 6 hour boat ride to Isle Royale. During the ride, we played Spoons (with pennies), Apples to Apples, chess and just hung out. The kids found the snack bar and ate some junk food while Victor and I took turns napping!



The Ranger III docked at Isle Royale:
















Due to a delay in departure (throttle malfunction), we left a little late so when we got Isle Royale, we were already behind schedule. We filled our packs with water and set off on our hike as quickly as possible (not very quickly - it took us nearly an hour to finish our final preparations!!!)

Gavin's pack held about 15 pounds, Lillia held 18, Alisia held 26, Jared held 29, I held 29 and Victor held 37. The kids set off and Victor and I tried our best to keep up! Well, that was for the first mile. Then Gavin started to get tired. Victor carried his pack for a little (he was carrying over 50 pounds now!) and Gavin was able to get some energy back.  

When we reached the Three Mile campground, we considered setting up camp there for the night. But after feeding the kids some protein bars, M&M's and Gatorade, they unanimously wanted to continue on our journey. I was the only skeptical one! We had taken about 2 and a half hours to get to Three Mile and the next campground, Daisy Farm, was even further. However, we set off around 7:30pm, knowing that the sun stays up until 10pm and hoping that we could make it before dark.

The journey was not an easy hike. We climbed over branches and rocks and tried to maneuver around mud puddles (which seemed more like streams running on the trail). The guide on the boat told us to embrace the mud and just go through it. Gavin was the first one to take the guides advice when he fell into the puddle. I warned him that he would have wet feet for the entire trip now. However, it wasn't much longer before every single one of us had slipped into the mud. Once we gave in, our trek was a little faster because we weren't trying to avoid mud anymore! Gavin was a trooper but he needed help with his pack. I think Victor must have carried his pack for at least 2 out of the 7 miles we traveled! Good thing Victor is so fit!!

Around 9:30, we finally reached Daisy Farm and Jared bolted for the latrine (he didn't want to dig a hole!) We found the last available shelter so we didn't have to pitch a tent. (Actually, there were two more options but you had to walk through puddles to get to those two.) We took our shoes off by the shores of the lake and washed out legs, feet, and shoes as best we could. 

We hung out shoes on some paracord in the hopes that they would dry and began making dinner. Alisia got to choose since it was her birthday and she chose the garlic mashed potatoes and chicken. The chicken was bland but when we mixed it with the potatoes, it wasn't too bad. For her birthday dessert we had apple crisp. That was a nice treat! We finally wrapped up our long day around 11:30pm and headed to sleep. (Gavin and Lillia had fallen asleep around 10:30, after eating.)

Lillia's idea is that we just camp here for three days and then hike back! I'm not completely opposed to that!! However, our plan is to hike 4 miles on Saturday (in no rush!) to get to the Moskey Basin campground and continue further into the island to explore. 

The Adventure Begins

Yesterday we loaded in the car at 5:30am and began our 17 hour journey to northern Michigan. This is an area of the country I have never explored and I was surprised by the scenery. Once we were north of Detroit, there wasn't much to see except green forests and some farmland. Not a terribly exciting trip, but we managed! The kids exceeded our expectations and got along beautifully for the entire ride! (Ok, one small argument between Lillia and Gavin but over 17 hours, that's pretty good! In fact, it's better than when we are at home!)

Most of the kids (and Victor) slept for the first few hours...here's a bad picture of it! 

Lillia and Gavin rigged up a bucket to pass things between the front and back of the car and it worked out amazingly well! Especially when others were sleeping and we didn't want to bug them!

We pulled into our hotel a few minutes after midnight and Alisia was still awake so we celebrated her 13th birthday with the hotels free cookies! 

This drive goes down as the longest we've ever driven in one day! And we aren't hoping to repeat that anytime soon!