The Hike, (High Country Pathway, Michigan)

   First let me start out by saying this did not in any way turn out the way I had planned it, But now that I have experienced what I went through, i guess I wouldn't change it.  This is my journal of hiking the High Country Pathway.  The longest Loop in Northern Lower Michigan.  It was intended to be an 80 mile loop.  It was anything but.

Andy and Becky Williams

when we left my hiking pack was 25.2 lbs, Andys pack was 32 lbs.

Day 1.  June 25, 2015:

   Today is a Thursday.  Andy (my husband) and I worked our normal work shifts and got home.  We are fully packed and ready to go.  Our kids are finishing packing all there stuff to go off to Grandma and Grandpas for a few days.  We loaded the car and couldn't get on the road fast enough.  We drove just over three hours to our beginning destination, The Pigeon Bridge Camp ground.  Just before we reached the campground I looked over and there was a huge beautiful rainbow in the sky.  Everything felt so perfect. Pigeon Bridge Campground is the most south-west part of the trail that you can park and camp in almost the same location.  We got there, set up our tent (in like 2 minutes because it was so easy), found the bathroom and fresh water pump, and then Andy got us a fire going.  For this hike I had bought him a neat folding saw, so he was out chopping up dead logs and branches for the fire.  I started getting dinner ready.  Our First night dinner was dehydrated Chicken and Rice, and honestly it was really good.  The whole trip we ate dehydrated meals and they were all very good.  By ten pm we were settling in for the night.  It ended up being pretty chilly.

Day 2.  June 26, 2015:

   We woke up and there were still some hots in the fire pit so we got it going a little bit.  I put together our little cook stove and boiled up some water for our dehydrated eggs and bacon breakfast, again delicious.  I brought us each enough instant coffee to have two cups in the morning and one for me for lunch for an extra boost I may need during the day. We ate, got the tent put away, repacked our bags, and said goodbye to our car.  Off we went.  "Holy crap, this bag on my back is heavy!"

   Its getting afternoon time, our shoulders are hurting pretty good from the weight of our packs on us.  But we are okay.  A couple breaks an hour for a few minutes is good for you......right?  We came across a small lake that stunned the both of us.  It was like the ocean popped up in a small circle in the ground.  It was a lake called "section 4".  The water was so clear and blue green.  There were huge logs sunken in the water that had a bright white color to them.  It was so beautiful the only thing we could do was rip our clothes off and get in.  It was cold.  I got in first.  It felt so good on my feet.  Then Andy undressed, and we realized "holy crap, there are ticks on you!!".  Yep, andy had a tick digging into his foot.  Little did we know by the end of this trip we would be pulling literally a hundred from our bodies.  Anyway, we both ended up submerging into this awesome lake and it fully refreshed and energized us.  To make it even better, while we were in the water a huge Bald Eagle flew over us.

Section 4 lake

Lunch!

  We hiked about 7 miles and decided to stop at the Grass Lake scenic over look and eat some lunch.  We again ate dehydrated chicken and rice, ate some granola and dried fruits, cup of coffee, and water.  Our shoulders are really feeling the burn from the weight of our bags now.  I'm so grateful our feet aren't killing us yet.  We came across the Pigeon river.  We were able to sit for a bit and pick the ticks from our skin and clothes.  The ticks are so bad!  We are constantly having to stop and do tick checks. We had to get our water purification system out.  It's called the Survivor Filter Pro.  This tiny machine has a triple filter in it and provides really clean fresh water.  This is a must for long hikes.  Obviously we cannot carry enough water for 80 miles for the both of us so we have to have something to clean water.  This was a life saver!

Our Survivor Filter Pro.  It is so small and is triple filtered.  This little pump will safely pump hundreds of gallons of safe drinking water.

  Evening:  We came across a nice looking Elk rub so we took each others pictures with it.  It was about 8 feet tall. We reached a campground called Pine Grove Campground, unfortunately this campground is only 6 sites, first come first serve.  The camp was full.  Actually, it looked more like a party.  There were cars parked at all the spots, but only tents and a ton of chairs around one fire pit.  I was a bit afraid that there could be a bit of a confrontation if we asked to camp or questioned why vehicles were all over the sites but no camping supplies on them.  So, we did what we legally had to do, and set our GPS for one mile and walked.  (in Michigan you cannot camp on State land within one mile of a campground)  We walked our mile, it looked decent, so we set up camp just off the trail, almost on the trail actually.  It was a quiet comfy spot in the woods.  We started a small fire, set up camp, made our dinner of dehydrated chicken breasts and mashed potatoes (it was phenomenal), for dessert we had hot apple crisp, also so delicious I would consider buying it to eat at home even if it is survival food.  We cleaned up our dishes, packed our bags, and Andy hung the hiking packs about 50 feet or so away from camp way up in a tree.  I was so exhausted and sore.  My collar  bone areas were very swollen.  I also started feeling a bit sick and was having some anxiety (I suffer with pretty extreme anxiety anyway), by nine p.m. I was drifting off to sleep but kept hearing critters running around.  Andy  would occasionally sit up and check and it was always chipmunks chasing each other.  I saw more chipmunks on this trip then I ever care to see again. What was to come was not what I was ever expecting........

Bear tracks.

  Night:  Crunch, crunch, snap!!  I woke up, It was only 9:30 pm or so, only a half hour since I fell asleep.  Andy was looking over the map and fiddling around with stuff.  I said "what is that noise?".  He looked out and quickly sat down and said "oh my god its a bear right here" as he's pointing to the corner of our tent!  I got up so fast, but mentally I was confused and freaking out, and tired, and exhausted, and scared, and yeah every emotion.  I peeked out and I saw its huge black butt!  I sat back, and said "should we call somebody?"  And My husband was already calling our brother In Law Dennis who is very familiar with this area.  It was a bit of an excitement at the moment for andy.  Then I got out and yelled at the bear, clapped my hands, grabbed my loudest high pitched whistle in the world and blew on it and the bear literally turned around, looked behind it and in walked another bear!  NO NO NO!!  They arent scared!  They arent running away like everyone in the world says a black bear will do!  By this time Andy had dialed 911 who was dispatching the DNR to our area.  The bears started pacing back and forth out in front of us, getting as close as 20 feet.  By now, Im in full blown shock, my husband is being calm telling me to keep blowing the whistle and yelling but that it was going to be okay.  The DNR knew of our whereabouts, but it was a very narrow trail so we would have to get to the closest cross road, which was Webb Rd.  Andy stayed on the phone with 911 who was dispatching to the DNR the whole time. I was trying to pack our crap up, Andy had to leave me briefly at one point to get our hike packs down from the tree.  Somehow we managed to half ass pack everything up and start moving north to the DNR and hope we could be located.  Now that we are on the move, the bears have wondered off........To the north.  We told the 911 lady that we were having to basically follow the bear in order to reach the DNR, and sure enough we came across the bears again but at a good distance.  After walking/super speed walking/freak out jogging we started to blow our whistle again so the DNR could try to locate us, and they would turn their siren on for two "woop woops" and back and forth until we could find each other better.  Finally after a mile in the dark with just head lamps I jumped into the road and there was the DNR truck about 200 feet away coming towards us.

This is the spot we set up camp and had "bear Debacle" go down.

   Explaining what happened:  The DNR officer got out of his truck along with another young man who was doing an internship.  We had to tell the story to the officer who seemed to be in a bit of disbelief.  He questioned us over a few things, im sure to make sure we werent fibbing.  He was pretty shocked by the incident.  He had said in his 26 plus years of being a C.O.  he had not had an incident like this.  Usually black bears will run like the dickens when a human scares them.  His honest thoughts were 1.  these were possibly two young siblings from last year that are still together and were very curious or 2.  Someone has been out illegally baiting in the area that we just happened to set up camp and they have become custom to humans providing them with food.  Now I will say, the bear were never hostile or aggressive to us, but were way to close for comfort.  And now let me explain another thing to you that I get questioned on a lot.  Why did we not have a gun?  Well, here's the honest truth..... We have plenty of long guns.   We hunt with Rifle and Shotgun.  We dont own a carryable handgun.  I do have an antique black powder pistol but it was too bulky to carry.  It is against the law to borrow a hand gun from anyone and carry it if it is not registered to the carrier.  Yes, we did have people offer hand guns to carry but for as much as we love our guns and our hunting abilities, I would be crushed to lose my weapons or hunting privilages.  But you can bet we are actively shopping for our own handguns now.  Back to my story, The DNR officer was very pleased with our prepping and reaction for the situation.  For us keeping all food cleaned up, and bags hung away from camp up in a tree.  He was pleased to know we took the right action in trying to scare the bear away first and then calling authorities when we felt it wasn't working for us.  So, we hopped in the back of the officers bad ass truck, and he drive us to our vehicle.  While riding in his truck we realized Andy had lost his buck skinning knife he carries.  bummer.  We were in such a state of shock that we started driving and tried to get a hotel room in the next town only to find out some huge country concert was going on and every hotel from the trail to Saginaw was totally full!  By the time we got to the saginaw area we thought "might as well drive home now, its only and hour away".  So we did.  Got home at 3:30 a.m.  crawled in bed, and was still shocked.

Saturday June 27th:

   Im pretty devastated.  Still in a state of shock, but happy to go to my moms and see my kids and family that had come in to town.  We had a cook out, told our stories, had a nice time.  Went and watched our son play in the Gus Macker Tournament.  All the while, I'm hurting inside so badly.  I felt like I had given up too easily.  We all went home and went to bed.

The day we were home my nephew came to visit me and had these jammies on. cutie

Sunday June 28th:

   I cant take it, I went to a friends to pick my son up from where he had spent the night, and when the dad asked me what happened, I started to cry.  I apologized for crying, but it all welled up in me.  I was desperate to go back.  I felt like my husband was okay to just be done...... He was already in the garage tinkering around with his Jet Skis for the upcoming holiday.  I got home, and had a total break down.  I cried my eyes out sitting in my barn alone, wanting to go back and finish what I started.  Andy came out to see me and I told him I needed to go back.  He was not totally on board at first.  But he knew how much this meant to me.  So, I called my mom, still crying and told her I needed her to support my decision to go back and try again.  Thank god, she said "I support you, do what you gotta do, pack the kids, bring them back".   And I did.  Within a couple hours, we were back on the road and I was so thankful to be trying this again.

Back for round 2!

Sunday evening of June 28th:

   We decided to start in a new location.  This time were starting in the north east corner.  First we camped Sunday night at the Shoepac Lake camp ground.  I love that campground, there is a beautiful lake attached to the sites.  We camped there, woke up nice and early.

Monday June 29th:

   I feel like its day one again, but in reality it's day two of hiking.  Anyways, We stopped at a gas station on our way to the High Country pathway parking lot on the north part of the loop, got coffee and a breakfast sandwich. We got to the parking lot, and threw our bags on and headed counter clock wise this time.  Honestly we are headed back towards the bears....... but Andys plan is to bypass that section and walk a horse trail to the campground.  The North west section of the trail was pretty soggy and very buggy.  And yes, still very tick filled.  We hit the trail at a nice 8:15 a.m. It feels perfect outside.  This section was hard but really fun.  We came across lots of walk ways through thick woods that you walk on planks of wood.  Its so wildernessy up there.  There were grouse everywhere, and it's nesting season so babies are running and flying all over the place.  The grouse really seem to nest close to the plank walk ways and wooden bridges.  One Mother grouse actually fanned out and ran straight at andy like an attack.  It was funny but scary.  She did not want us near her nest.  We left her alone and she was fine.  We also came across lots of fresh bear tracks all throughout the north west part of the trail.  I took photos of my hand next to them or my foot next to them for scale.  We went in with a different attitude so I did not feel so scared.  And since we didn't have a hand gun, we got a bunch of fire crackers, and Roman candles.  That will scare a bear away!  HAHA!

Many of the trails are long planks of wood to walk on.  It made it really fun and adventurous.

Monday afternoon, we nearly ran out of water.  It was so hot and humid.  We were dragging ourselves terribly.  Our backs were killing us.  Just when I though "I'm going to die of thirst", we came across a tiny little stream, no more then two feet wide with clear water and a sandy bottom.  Oh My Gosh!! Thank Goodness!!  I was able to bust out my Survivor Filter pro and pump us a ton of fresh water in minutes.  We guzzled and guzzled and pumped more to fill up our bottles.  I was so relieved to have come across that stream of water.  I was actually feeling nervous that we werent going to cross water till way further ahead.

using the water filter.

Okay, we have made it to the point of either taking the horse pathway or staying on the High Country Pathway and walking over the bear location again.................I wanted to go over the bear path again.  I didn't want to feel like I was cheating by taking another path around it.  We knew we had the fireworks, we knew we had plenty of daylight to get through the section, and could make it to the Pine Grove campground that had been full a few days earlier, but this time you can bet I will ask if I can crash on someones site and even pay for it.  So, we did it.  We started walking the path again.... talking pretty loudly to keep animals away....hopefully.  We walked through a section of forest that has silver barked beech trees and they have claw marks up them because the bears will climb the trees to eat the beech nuts.  That was interesting to see.  The trees have an odd rounded bubble shape as they go up.  They do not look like they belong in Michigan.  We finally made it to Webb Rd. the location where the DNR picked us up.  Now we are officially back on the trail we were on when we camped in the wild and had the bear incident.  We walked about a mile and came across our camp.  Our charred pieces of wood from our fire still spread out from us putting out the fire before we booked it out of there.  Nothing was scuffed up or out of place.  I wanted to see if animals or the bears would've come back and scratched around the area, but it was exactly as we left it...... And there it was, my husbands buck skinning knife he had dropped in the midst of insanity.  Laying on the trail, blended in perfectly with the leaves, only to see the silver blade.  It was a triumphant moment.  We faced our fear, got the knife back and were continuing on our way safely!

Monday evening:

    We made it to the Pine Grove Campground.  Not a single person there.  Everyone was cleared out.  We had the choice of all six sites.  We walked around and examined them all.  We chose the one we wanted at the top of the grounds.  We set up camp, pulling an extra picnic table over to our site to make a tarp shelter to go over our tent because there was a tiny chance of rain.  It never rained.  A lady ended up pulling in and claiming a spot.  And her friend showed up too.  They were there for a few nights of Kayaking.  We told one of the ladies all about the bear debacle, but she did not want us to tell her friend because her friend is just getting into camping and didn't want it to scare her away.  We also explained to her how the next day we have a 15 mile hike ahead of us that we already did in the beginning but it was our only way to get to the section we havent done yet, so she offered us a ride!  Yes!  We dont have to re walk that 15 miles and waste another day!  I was so happy for her help.  They were very caring for us and were very helpful.. Annette and Amy, Thank you girls!

Camp at Pine Grove Campground with our rain tarp over two tables.

My husbands complete exhaustion. 

Tuesday Morning June 30th

   Annette and Amy Drove us to the Pigeon bridge parking area of the HCP, this is were we started in the very beginning of this journey.  Now we are going in the opposite direction.  Now we are in the southwest corner heading southeast. We sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, ate some trail mix, and off we went.  Let me tell you this section has way more inclines then any of the other sections we were on.  I felt like I was climbing a mountain.  My legs were burning so bad.  Sometimes I would say out loud, "just one foot in front of the other ".  The ticks were not as bad through here.....still bad but not as bad.  The forests in the section were very beautiful, they were thick but not dark.  It seemed like the north west section felt dark.  This was bright green and open.  We came across a couple open areas that almost looked like huge food plots.  maybe the DNR does food maintainance for the elk herds in the area, or maybe it was just a huge grassy soy beanish looking area.  We were pretty tired, our legs were hurting us pretty good and Andy had a huge blister on the heels of both of his feet.  My feet were fine. It began to rain.  Oh no, rain.

One of Andys heel blisters

Lunch, we stopped at the cross section of the North Spur Shore to Shore trail and our trail and ate a little lunch,  We pulled our tarp out and made a rain shelter to sit under until it passed.  We ate, and sat, and picked ticks off of us, and took pictures of ourselves, and the rain sort of stopped.  We packed back up and hit the trail.  With a few minutes it started raining again.  Pouring rain, buckets upon buckets of rain.  It rained so hard our bags felt twice as heavy.  We pulled our rain protectors out of the bottom of our hike packs and slung them over the tops of the bags to try to keep our supplies dry.  We walked almost ten miles in pouring non stop rain.  At one point I noticed a huge Bull Elk out in front of us. We snuck up on it and realized there were 8 elk.  A few cows, a few young bulls, and one Neck banded cow.  It made the rain seem ok at that moment to watch them.  I love watching Elk here.  They are so huge, they look like they shouldn't be in Michigan.  Im glad they are here though, I love them. We also saw a whole lot of White tail deer on this section.  Even some fawns.  The whitetails seemed very large to me compared to the deer down on my property in southern Michigan.  We finally made it to the Town Corner lake Campground, it is still pouring rain.  We ran into the outhouse to get out of the wetness and make a plan.  We left out stuff in the outhouse (these are nice large clean outhouses) and ran with the tarp and bungee cords and made a rain shelter.  Then ran back to get the tent, set that up under the shelter, then to get out bags into the tent and change and dry.  It was a nightmare.  Everything we have is soaked.  Even the foot of my sleeping bag.  Our shoes are filled with water.  What are we going to do.  We got as dry as we could, warmed up food in the tent with our tiny stove, ate and did our best to get rest.  It poured all night long.  we were so miserable.  We could not walk the estimated 21 miles to the next campground in soaking wet shoes when Andy has huge blisters.

Some of the Elk we watched.

Our make shift rain shelter for lunch when it was sprinkling.

Wednesday July 1st:

   We woke up to it still pouring.  Still everything we have is soaked.  We cant go on.  I cannot expect Andy to walk 21 mile in wet shoes with his feet in the shape they are in.  I am so exhausted, so pissed it rained for 18 hours straight so hard like it did.  This sucks.  I looked at Andy as we are sitting in our tiny tent with moistness all around us and say "I want to go home".  And that was it, I said it.  The rain did me in, not the bears, not the hot steaming humid weather when I almost ran out of water, not the ticks that sucked my blood...... It was the endless rain that ruined our clothes, ruined our shoes, our sleeping bags are damp, I needed to go home.  We went two days with no cell phone service.  We told our families there was almost no service, but after the bear debacle I knew our families were worried about us.  If they were watching the weather, they would be even more worried about us.  So Andy walked around the campground and met a man who recently hiked Isle Royal with his family and was more then willing to take us to our car.  As we spoke with him we found out that we live in the same town and our sons are the same age, in the same grade, in the same school.  Maybe it was meant to be.  Maybe he was put there to help us.  Him and his son were up there fishing, and were looking for a new place to fish so them taking us north would give them a new area to fish at.  So, we packed up again, got in his truck, and got to our car.

Waking up to rain and being damp all night is NOT attractive.

This time though, I was okay with going home.  I did cry as we packed up, but not out of feeling like i failed, but I was truly beat up and feeling ready to go home and see my kids.  As we drove south I got a small cellular signal and a flood of texts came in.  Tons from my kids, mom and sisters.  "are you guys ok?",  "haven't heard from you",  "please call when you can"...... and from my son "We miss you both"  I started crying at that one.  Thats not like my son to text he misses us.  He's almost 16 years old, we bother him, annoy him, are around too much, we're stupid, don't know anything, did I mention annoying?  So as I headed home in the car I drifted in and out of sleep, and I felt good about going home.  I do not feel broken or shattered.... We came back, faced our fears and did what we came to do. And hopefully at some point we can come back and finish the other section we couldn't do.  Maybe another time of the year for a different kind of view.

Final thoughts:  I will be back to finish the full HCP, we did 40 miles total.  40 to go.  this trail was so well marked.  We never got lost, never got off track.  yes, you do need to pay attention to the trail, but all the marks are there.  This was so beautiful to see, going through the different sections of different forests were awesome.  I cannot wait to go back.  I would recommend this hike for those who love the outdoors.

                                                             
                                                                        Beçk¥