Brule Lake Trail BWCA & Superior Hiking Trail Backpacking
so hey ho there Shug here and i'm uh walking on the Brule Lake Trail up near brule lake minnesota it's a boundary waters trail i had to get a permit and stop and get that today seen this trail on the map many a time i think it's only 10 or 11 miles but it goes to eagle mountain which is the highest point in minnesota i'm about three miles in now a pleasant walk i'm just moseying along and right now the plan is to uh do this trail and go out and then head down to the superior hiking trail somewhere out of grand marais pack my catalyst for this trip and the woods are looking this way it's kind of that uh i picked this place to stop and take a break because the sun was shining here pretty earthy just gonna say earthy because uh i haven't seen like i say i haven't seen a lady slipper a couple little greens popping up but uh we're a little bit you know a little bit before the big bloom but i'll catch that soon enough oh i'm liking this site a real pretty little fire pit up in the shade kind of on a little point got the lake on both sides so uh this is the uh sort of the sunny side and uh cut right across here this is the shady side yes i'm liking i'm liking i'm liking this site this is where i'm gonna stay i got a breeze blowing through and i feel like a fool for only walking four miles today but i'll get on down that trail tomorrow there'll be happiness there will not be sorrow climb eagle mountain maybe there's a fountain of youth because i'm turning 63. my my me me so do so and there's franken quilt and i've got my warbonnet diamondback top quilt both of these are about 20 degrees supposed to get down in the low 40s but you know they don't make me too hot and i rather had them out brought those so in the morning i'll be peeping right down to this side of fish hook lake and that'll do just fine got my diy black crow tarp 11 foot ridge line about seven feet across roughly black bishop bag and uh i have my war bonnet el dorado hammock which is basically like the xlc without the shelf i could remove that bug net if i wanted but i like to bring it because it gives me back support when i want to just sit and stare it's quiet up here no cars i don't hear any canoers i hear no man-made sounds whatsoever i hear no industry i hear no cutting drilling driving just the wind brian i like the wind i like it a lot and as i was walking in when i took this little trail and it off of the brew-like trail there's not really a cairn or anything marking this little trail down here you just have to keep an eye out for it it's kind of a little meander in and then i uh i came to the doneker the pooper the latrine which is actually quite a ways back up the trail and did my little csi looked in it see any poop no toilet paper nothing so i'm thinking i might be the first person here this season and i live for moments like that i live for them be honest i'm getting hungry i haven't eaten much today had that stinger bar let's see what else did i eat had a little breakfast burrito that meg made me last night it's kind of a breakfast fajita and i ate that on the drive up but i feel a little bit peckish out here now so now right there usually enough to get me a right good sack of water one of my other disciplines is i've got my mesh pouch right here that goes you know inside my backpack and that has my car keys in it has my permit it has my money has some extra batteries it has some water purification tablets just little items but mainly because it's got my money and my key anytime i open that thing up i never leave it open after i get some always close it because it would be a drag to lose your money or your keys i love the little uh rituals that we all come up with backpacking everybody has their own little thing they do and how they do it and it just it just saves trouble to you know you learn going just zip it up every time don't leave it unzip because you'll flip it over your key could flip out and man that would be the worst to get back to your uh automobile my jeep and not have a key oh i think we got a pretty boil oh yeah that is what i am talking about you want to get all those bits and one thing i do because this little mug has some crevices at the bottom i turn my spoon around make sure to stir down in there to get every little bit of that cocoa mixed in there i want it all wow i like this view and i like knowing there's water behind me and of course uh the fine art of spoon licking sometimes i've done this tongue depressor licky spoon there's no better way to get the stuff off of it than the good old lick you know it's funny the ranger was going uh i had to go in and watch a little video and pick up my permit and then they ask you questions because so many people came up here last summer and sort of uh abused the place people cut down trees because it was in their way like a beautiful jack pine fell it right into the water man so they've gotten a little bit more stringent on quizzing you you have a little test after you watch the videos and uh you know one thing she asked me was about so if you're going to bathe do you bathe in the lake no ma'am you would take your water back 200 feet and bathe back there and you don't even want to bathe in the lake with biodegradable soap but i told her i said bathing man i come out here not to bathe i mean i brush my teeth and stuff and when i do my morning constitutional you know i take a wet wipe and clean me nether regions that's about as clean as i get the rest of them i want the funk so having this fire warmed me up man this is good chunked a bunch of butter in those potatoes um going for a little partial tarp pitch tonight just because right now i'm here i don't really want to block myself out get this in down that didn't pull back because i got this tree really close now where it terrain i could get up and take this far corner down which is just pretty much tied to that little tree right there stake that down and then that'll get my tarp down around this tight tree here and take this corner that i put over the top and bring it down but this way this is what i call one of my partial see the sky tarp pitches yet i'm still covered weather's supposed to be uh cool tonight but they're not calling for any rain or anything so it's clear as a bell up there but if i do hear sprinkles i'm i'm halfway done when i lay in here i can kind of get a little peek out right there but the edge of my hammock is right here so i'm i'm pretty much covered that'll be nice i still look down at that lovely water let me get my cubby ready to go right here it smells good some peaches and cream oatmeal and a pap cap i think it's a pretzel i'm hoping it's a chocolate peanut butter it was in my kit already remains to be seen yes sir got myself a birdie boy that miss wheatley would be proud boiled and purdy i always thought so very carefully i'm not going to get all fancy with it this morning man that smells good i'll tell you what i already told you so i don't need to tell you that i told you what woke up about 43 degrees a little chill but there's no wind overcast looking forward to today head on down to eagle mountain no they're the pretzel pop-tarts you know i hold out hope that uh peanut butter pop-tarts will appear in my kit sometime but but i like these pretzel ones man i only got about nine hours of sleep not my usual ten that's the way that goes maybe i'll make it up tonight quiet night it was so quiet i could hear all the bird action that was happening at night there was a lot of flapping going on flapping and landing in the water and slapping around and buzzing through and i had one of those moments where i thought something went up under my hammock and touched me it might have gone hang kind of low and uh let's see what did i do for this trip well i got brand new whoopee slings from a hammock i've been using the other ones for several years and i was inspecting them and i went you know i've never used a whoopee sling until the moment that it has broken and i've not heard a lot of reports of them breaking but i use my hammock a lot so change them out thought it was good because you know it did have a strap break last year one of my tree straps was a trip i did with jonah i think that was angle worm so you know you need to uh it is your suspension it's like changing your tires or getting a haircut every every once a while you got to do that a nice brew right here i like this honduras honey better as an espresso rather than a pour over but it's a nice dark good cup like you can see that you take my word for it well i was talking to you there and uh my battery died nope not died uh what happens is it comes up on the screen it says battery exhausted i'm too tired to go on i'm a battery you asked so much of me i'm exhausted i'm going to stop now i guess i don't like to use the word your battery died but it can be recharged so maybe exhausted is the proper term yeah pretzel pop-tart is not bad looking forward to a little ramble um mosey along i don't think i have to rush today at all which is really nice i do have to rush getting out of here tomorrow though get back out get in the car drive somewhere down the superior hiking trail and go from there but this was a really good spot really good small though i think where i'm hanging right now would be about that the only place i can see to put a tent you ain't gonna come down here with a lot of people no you're not yeah so you know uh when you're a youtube celebrity like me shook up the third person you're um often asked to do a lot of um a lot of different things your your time is requested well a couple of things i was just gonna last night i started reading um um it's a portion of a book that a guy named eric foster whidden who has written a book and he reached out about a year ago maybe even longer in the midst of writing it and asked if i would write a little comment or blurb or whatever you call it when you pick up a book and certain people have said something about the book and you know it's always a tough one when you're going well i haven't read it what if i read it and i don't like it but i said yes because i say yes to most requests like that what have i got to lose and seem like a dink if i don't but i did say something like well you know yeah i would i will read it and we'll go from there so his editor uh just last week sent me a little it's like 95 pages of it and asked if i would read it it's a book called misplaced and it is a backpacking trip and he is his character is misplaced and then there's other guys in it faith loyalty resolve strength wisdom um he's a religious and ex-pastor or still a pastor you know it has a religious bent to it but like any good story or even like watching a documentary it's not you know it's not like um written so far you know i laid up and read uh 35 pages of it last night and i like it number one it's a backpacking story um there were some traits in the character misplaced that i have to say uh i have those traits which you have to decide if they're good or not one is i don't ask for help enough i'm kind of self-reliant and if i don't think i'm good at something i don't want people to see it but so you know it's why i go backpacking is because this is probably the most spiritual i feel the most connected so not to get too far into that reading that last night was really cool because it's a backpacking story and you know they all have trials and tribulations and different things on the trail so so far really enjoying it and i you know i think in the way the world is now and i guess the world's always been like this but it's just in our face really more now is reading something uplifting and good that causes you to take a little look at yourself and hopefully adjust a few things for the better never a bad thing so enjoying it eric foster whidden enjoying it the other little report is um oh about three weeks ago me and a guy named joe fredericks and he's from a radio station up here and well close to here in grand marais called wtip and uh him and his buddy you know they're canoers and everything and joe's the news director and they do their station does a podcast so we did one i don't think it's going to come out till june or july and it was one of those really interesting talks about diversity in the woods what sort of privilege is it uh to be able to go to the woods i just in a nutshell will say my parents boy scouts always went to the woods always played in the woods so it just became part of my thing and it was just sort of funny i think what i'm trying to say is you know sometimes you say your opinions and your thoughts on things spin ball spitballing and afterwards you have a little time to think about it and you go i hope i didn't sound selfish on that but my thought is the boundary waters is here now if you want to see it come see it you know there's a million places in the earth like that and we need the people that will come up here once and then spend the rest of their life um you know standing up for it maybe they never come up again i'm a guy that comes up again over and over so it's just one of those philosophical things that gets you thinking no no right or no wrong answer just speaking for myself but you know i will i will fund it with my money and i will fund it with my time up here walking it and respecting it so that podcast i'll you know when it comes out i'll put a link but it's just sort of funny to talk about you know your time in the woods and your all these little subjects where you think something as simple as backpacking yeah you know you load your pack and go you know it's like taking kids out even at scouts sometimes you go camping and come home going man i kind of hated that but somewhere along the line you learn to love it when you can go on your own you've learned all the skills your scout masters have taught you now you don't have to go with all those men and you can go on your own and the whole game changes man i'm sorry to get deep on you there i was just trying to inform you of some upcomings and things i get wrapped up into and have to talk about and they go man what am i talking about what are my thoughts man that was the longest walk to a uh backwoods doneker pooper latrine that i've ever done but a beautiful view as you sit this is one thing i love about the boundary waters even back here in remote places there's a fiberglass doneker but you're kind of looking down to the water okay i counted on my ocd there a little bit and i counted 387 steps from fire pit to the doneker beautiful little walk though beautiful just beautiful and i felt so good walking back the morning constitutional i'm not an animal i am a man suga i think you have a twisted intestine this is a mighty fine morning walk just been uh sort of down between all these ridges kind of low a little wet but not as rocky as yesterday so far pretty flat i don't have to exert myself too much and i i kind of like a morning walk and i can just kind of ease into it and uh tell you young folks out there thing about getting older you still got the will still got the desire to get out on the trail you just have to ease into it a little bit more you feel it more for sure and uh the hardest thing that i find you know even leaning down to tie your boots and put your boots on and everything is flexibility you just kind of lose the suppleness you have while you're young even though i do stretch a lot i've always been according to my mother so what i'm trying to say is enjoy that youth enjoy that flexibility me i am the tin man well us never did give nothing to the tin man that it didn't didn't already have and the tropics of sir galahad i am walking the trail with a moose i prefer that to a goose so well this is cool we're way upstream here this is the cascade river river i've camped on many times down closer to uh you know closer to lake superior and it's a big rushing river there and the trail heads on into the mystic landscape well i've been walking a couple hours now and uh just came to this beautiful little mossy it's like mordor a little spot in the forest perfect rock to lean my pack against it's uh pretty cool out today comfortably cool i'm looking around here though about 63 degrees a little bit overcast four percent chance of rain um possibly 50 chance of spam here in my little lunch pack kind of traveling light i got a i got a spam pack get a couple of more stingers i'll get a um what they call the greek bird seed candy but that's the sesame snaps and uh the emergency candy snack i got the penguin bar that's to get me through today and then tomorrow the whole hike back to the car so uh i gotta be a little choosy but i'm kind of excited about getting up on eagle mountain you know it's one of those things that you know you get like even with this trail i had an image of it in my mind and the image i had in my mind is is nothing like what the trail really is it goes to a lot of areas like this goes through a lot of just kind of dead leaves on the ground flat gray watered out melted areas you know the snow is only melted up here ah there was still snow on this trail the last trip i took was maybe two two and a half weeks ago so there was still snow out here so you get a lot of diverse looks and then a lot of little low wet areas but a lot of them are dry because it has been dry up here lately that's some ranger talk right there forest ranger i changed my mind i'm gonna eat half my spam and save the other half for tomorrow because uh i could spam possibly go bad it's always good to lick your spam now last trip i was on i cooked some spam and it's fantastic but i do not mind it this way because you're even like you know i've been in the woods uh probably less than 24 hours because i think i got on the trail like at two o'clock yesterday and you know your pallet's just not as discerning out here all right they've eaten half the spam and i'll tell you the truth this is the first time i've ever had to cut myself off half spam man it's tough man this is taking a lot of discipline on my part to put this spam away i'm just gonna have to stuff it in my little stuff so i can forget about it but get the buckets and actually i think i'm going to eat half of my sesame snaps as long as i'm putting myself on this you know this discipline here of eating half of something i love these things looks well i'm on the road to eagle mountain i think it's a day hike place and i certainly got here early early earlier than i thought earlier than i thought i would get here and uh there's one big beautiful campsite down there i looked at i'll kill some time i'll go check the other one i could start i could just walk back and camp to our camp last night and be out real quick tomorrow that's what i'm gonna mull up on eagle mountain where should we mow what he's gonna do i'll reach down and loosen up my hiking boots at some color shoe so and he's hiking up and he's staying somewhere up here on the north shore he's a what are you a business manager for the schools yeah for public schools pitcher for the dead wild cats and i go by smoke smoke baby i found some smoke up here on the mountain have you been having a good time brian jacobson i have been having a great time yeah i've been trying to get up here for a long time i was just thinking 3.7 miles each way 400 feet up i don't know if i can do it but you did it didn't you i made it up i'm not done yet you know he's gone from here to there he's using resolve there it is right behind me there the official marker bigger than i thought it'd be pretty cool been meaning to come here for 20 years never too late there's always new adventures i'm proof of that right now one of the very few markers on this trail there's one more over here that points you to the brule lake trail other than that no markings but there really isn't any portages across the brew lake trail well it was awfully fun being up on top of eagle mountain i spent maybe hour 45 up there just sitting staring i got a couple of conversations i didn't know i wanted to talk so much but uh you know the world is coming out here in minnesota and i got down to the site and it was super windy of course now the wind has died but i macgyvered myself a little tarp rig here you know since it is supposed to be cool tonight you know like last night down in the low 40s and uh yeah it's always cooler than you think particularly when there's a breeze blowing and part of my phone is i like messing with tarps so the wind is coming straight in this way and with my pitch that is about as low as i can get that tarp and still have a little room to be comfortable under there so i took my rain jacket and when i made this tarp i put myself a couple little tabs right into the hem right there for situations like this where i got it just kind of secure the tarp from blowing in on me works real good i prefer it on this tarp rather than putting them here they've worked really well down there so i just got my rain jacket kind of macgyvered on and then took my hood and i took a long line because i you know i got a project to replace my tarp lines too and i don't know if i'll do it at home i thought i'll do it in the woods someday so i've had this little hank of uh dyneema lying with me and just ran that right over here the little lash and stuff on the tree and that is kind of holding it up but the genius part at least i think as genius as i get is uh how do i get this to keep from blowing in well i take my daytime water bottle and and a rock and i got it in that pocket and i got two rocks in this pocket and right now that's enough to keep it from blowing up on me real hard and you know if the wind dies it might take it down i was thinking if it got real bad i could go get a rock by the fire pit and just kind of kind of set it just like that you know and that's just enough to keep that wind that's right where my butt is hanging down and just to keep that wind from robbing that heat from my underquilt that was fun project that's that's really my favorite thing to do as with tarps let's see if you can come up with something with what you have and i have plenty but i've had to do some rigs like that before in interesting ways and you know it was looking like it was going to rain but now it's not when i was up on eagle mountain uh sitting there in that wind so long that actually started to get kind of cool put on my windshield and then hiked on down then it was warm again but this camp right here is the north whale lake camp and it's pretty close to where you uh take the trail up to eagle mountain it goes on back that way it's a little rough but you come out at another little part of the lake but i'm gonna get my pack i'm gonna make a little sitting spot down here and just enjoy it because i got here a little early early so that ain't a bad flow i'll take that i'll just sit here and enjoy the sound of water running into a an old bottle that i've been carrying for four years you know but there's just something to be said for sitting down watching your water bottles fill feeling the wind blow across your body think about today today's been fun been a good day i won't say fun but just a good day it was a good walk um enjoyed the walk enjoyed what i was seeing enjoyed stopping to have a half a spam lunch i enjoyed being on top of eagle mountain for an hour and a half or so maybe an hour 45 couple conversations which i didn't think i'd enjoy but i but i did and uh just being in the woods and you know seeing part of my own state that i haven't seen before oh hello mosquitoes you know i had to zip up my bug net last night that was i don't know six or seven mosquitoes and they were just wanting to like you know make a home right in my ear let them bite me i thought i could get by without zipping the bug net but uh no no i zipped it up i really enjoy just laying on the ground right now so it's fun to walk along and just think about i didn't really think about life back there i was thinking about life out here just trail walking you know through hiking spirit hiking trail do i still want to do it would i do it if i did it i think i'd do it late fall because i got to attend the garden and i guess got too many things to do but fall maybe and then uh going to the formula one race in austin the american grand prix in october with hicks and turk very excited yes the maple king will be joining and it's gonna be i mean we're all old friends from high school so it's just gonna be super fun and been my dream to see a formula one race live i've never done it and they've opened up the american grand prix so off we go and um next weekend there's no race this weekend so i'm not missing anything being out here it's been four formula one races my team mclaren has been doing really good nice to have daniel ricardo on the team but uh next weekend is the monaco grand prix and to me i'm so excited about that they didn't have it last year because of covid and to me that was the first grand prix i ever saw as a kid we'd kind of see it televised and see jackie stewart and i'm just excited i love that i love looking at everything around the racetrack i love the racetrack i feel like it's going to be a really different outcome so little little things to look forward to are good very good like like the water bottle fill it up so i surprised that little beaver he gave me a double take away oh i didn't even hear him coming man i'm just kind of laying back here enjoying the wind thinking about my i think i got dottie's chicken and dumplings tonight from pakit gourmet that's always satisfying maybe candy bar that's what i'm thinking about chicken and dumpling time i love that every time it's the peas and the corn you can see them there's a there's a pea and there's some corn these little square dumplings yeah um the fries cream dark chocolate with this sort of i've talked about it before but it's like a white kind of i would say almost an orange tasting sort of cream ma'am i love it and i'm only eating half of it i put half away this is my day of haves because i like to do things halfway never all the way man that sun is bouncing off the lake it's just kind of warming me up i'm more than likely giving me a basal cell carcinoma sun is still up and i have crawled in but i'm gonna lay here and read and i'm gonna review a little bit of video and cull a little bit maybe there might be a couple things i need to cut out but that's about that i do uh turn 63 tomorrow no big deal i think this is a fun way to spend it because uh i'm not into having big birthday parties anymore though i am hoping that when i do get home there is cake that i'm hoping for and i'll do more than eat half of it like i have done today my halves today i will i may eat the whole cake man i can hear my stomach my stomach so slumber time oh nothing like getting up and sipping that morning brew the honduras honey um this little brewer works really good i like that it folds flat and i know 100 of you're going to ask me what kind it is and i think i've said it on other videos if i can find out what it is i think i still have the box i'll put it in the link below well it does the job i mainly like to defold slap got a shag nasty in my coffee well i got myself some syrup and butter and megan bought these brioche little waffles for her mom because her mom was craving waffles and she said i should take two of them eat them up and have myself a birthday breakfast so that's what i'm gonna do do a little something special on my special day man i slept hard last night really good it's sort of about 4 30 in the morning man it was just like all the birds in the area all those loans just woodpeckers they all decided just to go on duty and start making some noise it's about 5 30 in the morning now and i was gonna i was gonna get up at four and start hiking and uh i decided i didn't want to and mainly it was because i uh i tend to always just have an agenda and keep myself on it and i i don't want to i just know i have to hike about nine and a half miles back to the car drive to grandma ray and get on the spear hiking trail somewhere and it's not dark till light so i just want another night in the woods really i'm just going to light up the fancy feast put just a little bit of fuel in there very little all right there we go and uh try just hovering my waffles over that thing a little yeah i don't want to burn the syrup in the butter but i want to melt it it's a lazy man's way i should uh be up fixing a fire to do it but uh i just don't want to get out of the warmth of this hammock here because it's cool this morning 43 degrees which is you know not cold but cool comfortable i can wait no longer well meg thank you for suggesting i do this for my very special morning hmm well that's wonderful delightful and for those of you that ask and i get asked a lot should your wife ever watch your videos oh oh no she does not she lives with me i may try to show her just this little portion where i go thank you meg i love you so much thank you she won't care you know family's never into your thing as much as other people well those are little store-bought waffles i've never seen them when they brought them home i was going to these for me just because no my mom's been craving waffles i'm gonna go over and fix my mother-in-law some good waffles i got a waffle maker i didn't know she was craving them but they're just they were called little brioche waffles in there about like that big i always enjoy seeing those little glacial erratics that just dropped out of the glaciers when they were melting i don't know a long time ago when global warming was still happening thousands of years ago but when you come across one just sitting in the woods it's like it's just perfectly shimmed i'm gonna try to make good time back to the car so i can reboot and then drive straight to grandma to the trailhead and not stop anywhere and get anything or go to town just so i can keep on the move yeah i found some old equipment out here what that is probably something from the logging days some blacksmith made that there's another piece right there something boy that's a heavy iron bar just remind you that not everybody was back here for leisure or leisure there were guys working a lot of this trail looks like it could have been a you know back in the old days when they would pull the logs out in the winter with the uh on these big sleds horses pulling them until they started getting mechanized vehicles that's always kind of cool to see there's a bunch more of it here that's that's down so much i can't even move it and then there's a whole bucket there's an old barrel yeah this is back here just all kind of machinery parts that's heavy man that is iron chain links hooks no barrels industry was here well i made a lot better time getting back to the jeep and that was because it was only about seven miles back uh i looked at that sign again coming out and said nine and a half miles to the eagle mountain trailhead and i didn't go down there because that's where all the people are well there we are looking at the beautiful little town of grand marais up here on pig cushion mountain and now i'm heading on for my birthday i remember this section now i've only walked it once it was with the wandering fool several years back and we were coming from north to south i'm going the other direction now but you have to get a weird pace going down them man i have been i've been humping since that parking lot it was like it was like the 1920s there people dancing in the parking lot everybody on the trail you have to get past all the mountain bike trails and pin cushion mountain overlook and i talked about three or four people and a group of people that recognize me hey you're that hammer guy aren't you good to see you out here and had a girl behind me walking a dog and i was trying to stay ahead of her after i passed her and said cutting through you didn't want an old man following you and then stop and talk to some guy from the forest service and then i'd see her catching up and i could see that look in her face like i keep catching this old axe murderer man anywho i'm just gonna keep walking i don't even uh i don't even know where i'm going what i'm gonna do uh i think i'm probably um yeah i don't know probably done two miles so far so maybe i'm on like getting toward mile 10 for the day feeling good i never even loosened my boots up when i jumped in the jeep and drove here so somewhere down at that river maybe i might stop taking my boots off a minute if there's a place to stick my feet in the water it might because this is a sunny section of trail and really it's only about 71 degrees but that sun's intense today so i stopped here to have a little break catch some shade listen to the sounds of the devil track river i just talked to three young guys down there sitting at the campsite having a nice lunch and uh they're heading up the same way as me and oh i don't know i think it's getting to be about three o'clock i'm probably at about uh 10 or 11 miles for the day now start to slow down a little bit you know uh first real hike of the season you know come on old man walking yeah well it's a lovely little spot right here just to feel this cool breeze coming through it's fishing opener this weekend i i guess i didn't know that because i'm not a big fisherman but so i think most people are going to be on the water because man i saw a lot of canoes going in and maybe there won't be as many people on the trail i'm telling you this walk for the last hour has been a great walk you hear the river just about all the time yeah some ups and downs but it's just i don't know how to describe it it smells good pretty easy footing woo buddy look at that still some ice the last bastion of winter hangs on here all right then got them aside woods creek and i'm sharing it with a couple of guys uh david and isaac who kept passing each other on the trail and i could have walked on another three miles to another campsite but you know i've done about 15 miles today 14 or 15. that's enough for a 63 year old man early in the season early anyway there's my rig and they're setting up back over that way there's me and there's a big dirty tent pad so whoever comes in i'm gonna be camping right next to and i'm sure people will but this is just one of those areas it's all these old poplars and birch and i don't like hanging off poplar birch they're weak trees no fence you guys just don't have sturdy backbones and they're always the ones you see laying on the ground so i'd rather not so i got a couple of nice pines here to be on and that was the only ones i could really see within reason and i don't care because i i came on this one knowing i'm probably going to be sharing a site so i'm mentally prepared for it you know had a couple of nights alone so i cannot complain good morning so i have hope my dreams are alive i've not even have coffee yet and my eyes are getting wide a quiet morning here i had a shared camp with two guys last night and uh run into them on the trail a couple of times isaac and david two brothers super nice guys we had really good conversation around the fire kind of realizing uh maybe how much i'm really needing some human interaction now and then with all of this past years you know not doing that as much and i'm a little excited this morning because i have um the pick-me-up bar from germany sent to me by a viewer and i'd like to say guten tak and dunka shane to jim hendrix not jimi hendrix with an eye on the end jim hendrix with no eye on the end jim hendricks mighty kind w man thank you my daughter got into my knockers bars and just discovered she loved them took a few home with her what's dad to do so this morning it's going to be my daggly adoro instant espresso because i just don't feel like messing with the coffee grounds and the filter and then spreading it out in the woods later and holding the wet filter up and putting it in my trash i'm going the easy route i just want caffeine so i'm definitely definitely going to walk back to the car and head on home oh decisions decisions and i don't even really have to make any decisions do i i shouldn't try to make one without coffee i am talking low because you know there's other people in camp so i don't want to disturb them because uh they're having their morning slumber laying in their tents matching tents side by side i don't know one of them looked like they strung a hammock up last night a recreational hammock you don't remember seeing it yesterday it's definitely empty but it makes my heart feel good to see it because you know hammocks hang with that little sway and it looks like a light grin in the woods it does looks like a light grin in the woods so the pickup bar when i open that box and you know whenever i get a box of candy even though my wife pretends she doesn't like candy i always offer her some and you know she's choosy and she saw the pickup bar and she went is there caffeine in that i'll have those and uh i said i don't think so but they're choco hazelnut and uh i decided that the germans really loved their hazelnut europeans in general i think uh you know i mean it's like the first time you stick your finger in some nutella and eat it and you go what is this flavor i do not know what it is but i'm instantly in love with it i can't go wrong with that i think i'm gonna eat this thing while i'm just sitting here i'm hungry it's kind of beautiful i've already eaten one at home because it's a uh it's like a like a wafer with chives wafer with chocolate in it boy is that good that is really good i do love away wafer the wafer slightly sweet thin little layer of hazelnut is perfect i'm going to try to use some control here and save it until my radical adorable instant espresso is ready and dip but i don't think i can i love it you're a good man jim hendrix good man packing gourmet polenta with pork sausage i always like this one it's a break from grits and uh placenta did i call it placenta polenta but you know polenta is pretty close to the word placenta and that used to kind of put me off but then once i ate some pomega but not placenta i hope they don't ever offer placenta with pork sausage i really enjoyed it and i hope i don't feel a tick on my leg and one tick out here just one the whole time coffee time the unmistakable dusky dark taste of a decolly dora winston espresso if i feel continental i call it medallia because that is the proper way man the first sip of coffee in the morning that very first sip that hot liquid hitting the tongue i can't believe you're sitting at home listening to this you know the trail's just up the hill and i heard some footsteps coming and just looked up and there was one of those uh female trail runner going by a little tiny pack on little bitty just a day pack probably with water i don't know how people run these trails i can barely walk them that's an interesting breed they don't they don't come to camp they just want to run it it's like they just want to they just want to get it over with i'm going to go out there and i'm going to run the thing i'm going to do 50 miles and scare it over with i'm not going to wear very much i'm going to wear really high shorts and a ball cap a tiny tiny pack and probably some no fun high energy food and i'm just gonna run it move on through it i'm not gonna stop and look at anything i'm gonna stop and look at any views i'm just gonna run i'm a trail runner not gonna camp out there i'm gonna run and then we go home and ice my feet at least that's what i think it is but i actually admire it it's just that running has never been my thing unless i'm running from something it was like yesterday getting out of that trailhead parking lot you know and everybody's standing at the sign and there were people behind me and in front of me so i was man i just put on my pace so i could boogie on and i was going you know this is after you know walking whatever it was almost eight miles coming out of the brew lake trail i suddenly had some giddy up and go i can only run fast if i'm running from something and someone is chasing me and there's danger that hasn't happened in a long time because now i'd rather just stand there and face the danger then go do i want to face the danger or run let's just face the danger i got a 50 50 chance that might not be bad but i know the running's gonna hurt i'm enjoying my bedaglio doro instant espresso so so yeah it's definitely worth coming to the top of pincushion mountain this view of lake superior out here you can't really see where the lake meets the sky when you walk up it just kind of gives you a little whoo-hoo void to go got a sail signal let meg know i'll be home maybe late tonight i think when i get to the jeep i'm gonna change the parking lot's not too crazy because i can't stand the smell of myself and uh driving to grandma ray see what's going on there see what the world is doing and then just mosey on back home about a five hour drive i feel good content mellow i've walked about four miles to get here maybe got about a little under two to go back to the jeep i'd like to commend give a little shout out to my hiking poles i think if any of the equipment i carry that saves me more than anything those two fellas well one's male one's female one's they one's of them one's a he one's a sheep they're both inanimate objects but they get me up in the hills to get me down the hills they maybe keep my balance i can use them to prop up my tarp in porch mode i use them as a camera tripod i can use them as a defensive mechanism so a shout out to my black diamond flick lock high compose sitting in the angry trout now i'm getting ready to order fried oysters fish and chips i had a fish crave them when i was out on the trail and got to take care of it i also had a craving for a coca-cola on ice oh man i got some fried oysters you know normally we're at the beach this weekend because meg has our showcases and all that mother's day around that time but didn't happen so uh oysters on the ham shell fried oysters are always my thing i mean i already ate one of these really good west coast oysters brought to minnesota that lake doesn't have oysters in it we have to suffer here in the midwest there's my fish sandwich homemade chips coleslaw homemade pickles that was delectable exactly what i was craving on the trail you know how you're out there and you're thinking of certain foods and pizza wasn't doing it cheeseburgers wasn't doing it fried fish out of that lake except for the oysters they got really good slaw here too they put these cranberries in there i never think i'm going to like it but i love it sent another picture of my plate so i got to bring her fish and chips home oh man i need to lay down on one of these park benches and take a nap after that it was a leisurely paced uh lunch it was exactly what i wanted unclenched no rush a nice server great fish i was thinking about that my whole walk this morning and now it's time to get on back down to the twin cities see my wife i don't want to leave grandma ray but i got to woo buddy i'll secure in sector 7. gopro stop recording
2021-05-26 04:01
