Saranac Lakes 2025 - Part III

This is Part III of a trip diary which starts here.

Day 6: Thursday 9/11 

Wednesday night was the only night of the trip I had any trouble sleeping, so Thursday morning I was happy to stay in bed for a while reading and continuing to watch the Billy Joel documentary (which is interesting, but really long!). 

Jen, Béla, and I paddled the perimeter of Middle Saranac Lake, including poking down into the creek in the southwest corner of the lake to find Bartlett Carry, a portage trail which is the only way to connect between Middle and Upper Saranac lakes. We had done this portage in 2016 when we did a trip traversing the Saranac Lakes. In the process we managed to destroy one of our kayak carts and generally wear ourselves out. This time around we were smart enough to not even get out of our boats. I will say as an aside that this is my second trip in a row to the Saranacs where I never made it into Upper Saranac Lake, which is too bad - there's some beautiful paddling there, especially around Follensby Clear Pond and Fish Creek. Next time ...

Impressive beaver dam near Bartlett Carry. Beavers are very industrious

Lunch spot on Middle Saranac Lake

Lunch break 

Upon our return it was interesting to note that no camp craft had been accomplished - for example, no water had been filtered and no wood had been cut. Tall Tom is usually Mr. camp craft, as industrious as any beaver, and his lack of activity around camp was evidence that he was feeling a little under the weather this trip. But he roused himself for some amazing cooking later in the day! It was my turn to make dinner. In planning my dinner recipes for our trips, by my second meal I'm usually doing some backpacker-like recipe, which in this case was a dehydrated vegetarian coconut curry. However once again my appetizer (dehydrated hummus) and dessert (Halloween candy and weird dehydrated cookie dough bites from Walmart) left something to be desired. I was saved in the appetizer department when Tom dug various leftovers from previous nights out of the coolers - three types of cheese, hummus (not the dehydrated kind!) and crackers, etc. But the pièce de résistance was Tom's peach cobbler dessert, built around peach pie filling from Tom's friend Pam. I've never met Pam but based on the volume of her home canning output I picture her as some kind of holdover from 19th Century, perhaps attired in a hoop skirt. 

Anyway, the recipe involved spreading the peach pie filling along the bottom of a dutch oven (yes, another of our campsite luxuries this trip was a big cast iron dutch oven), covering it with layer of those instant bake-it-yourself biscuits from a tube, and then letting it bake in the campfire. Hot and bubbly out of the fire it was really good!

Peach cobbler dessert

Enjoying our peach cobbler

Post-cobbler chilling by the fire

By this point, despite our abundance, we were starting to feel the pinch of the end of our trip. We were out of ice, so our coolers were not really keeping things very cold anymore. The gauge on our cooking gas tank was starting to go down. We had burned through a bunch of the firewood. Clearly, the end of the trip was approaching.

Day 7: Friday 9/12 

About this time we started to think about cutting the trip a day short. Our plan had been for our usual seven nights of camping, but a variety of factors were leading us to consider trimming a night. I had a music world commitment I wanted to honor on Sunday. Back home, Béla's wife had suffered an injury. In addition there was a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday, and I suspect Tall Tom was getting frustrated by his lack of ability to do much activity.

Typically every single day of the trip I eat a breakfast of grits with various mix-ins: protein powder, powdered milk, peanut powder, and/or trail mix. Our bagel breakfasts on this trip had already offered a break from this monotony. On Friday, our last full day in camp, I dug out the remainder of my granola (something I brought as a snack, not as a meal) and a box of shelf stable milk I had nabbed from the Best Western and had a bowl of granola and milk for breakfast. That may not seem like something worth writing about, but (a) I love breakfast cereal and these camping trips are among the rare occasions when I don't eat at least one bowl of cereal over the course of a day, and (b) I certainly never allow myself the sugary indulgence of granola. It was a treat! Oh, and I even used a disposable bowl so I didn't have any cleanup after breakfast (Béla washes all our dinner dishes in lieu of cooking, but we're each on our own for clean-up for our other meals).

Jen wanted a leisurely day in camp to read and sketch, so Béla and I set out to go back up into Lower Saranac Lake, this time exploring north into the lake itself rather than east into the ponds. I know, another day of "we kayaked, we ate lunch, we kayaked back." But every day has its unique treats, which on Friday included seeing a bear! Béla spotted it first as we were paddling back through the Saranac River. Sure enough, a black bear was watching us from the bank of the river, maybe sixty feet away. While bears are excellent swimmers, the land/water barrier provided at least psychological distance between us. I managed to get a picture before the bear turned and lumbered off into the tall grass. This was very, very cool and was in fact the best bear sighting I've ever had in the wild. I barely even saw bears in Alaska, save for the one I ran across walking the streets of downtown Juneau.

Bear!

Along the way we also saw the campsites of an apparently large group from the Hackensack River Canoe and Kayak Club, which each was marked with a large "HRCKC" banner. Given the context Béla and I figured out that the acronym probably stood for Something Something Canoe and Kayak Club, but didn't know what "HR" stood for until we Googled it later.

We also crossed paths several times with a fisherman in a powerboat whose dog was having a great time standing up in the bow, nose to the wind like a ship's figurehead. Very cute. The cool nights had caused the fall colors to start to pop, and the sun shining through the bright red of the maples would have made our trip back through the Saranac River spectacular even had we not seen the bear!

I must confess that while I love working the Saranac locks, in both directions the lock was in use by a powerboat so Béla and I simply carried our kayaks from one side of the lock to the other rather than waiting.

A fisherman's dog enjoying the day

Fall colors popping

Once we decided we were leaving on Saturday logistics dictated that it would make sense to bring one of the kayaks back on Friday, so I paddled back to South Creek and put my kayak back on my car. The motorboat followed and brought me back to camp.

Returning to South Creek

I feel like every year the writeup of this trip includes an explanation of some arcane aspect of Judaism. This year's topic concerns marking the anniversary of a loved one's death. Every year on the yahrtzeit, or anniversary of a close family member's death you light a candle and say a prayer known as kaddish. The catch is that kaddish is among the prayers which can only be said if there's a quorum of ten people, so the practice in at least Reform synagogues is to say kaddish for the week's yahrtzeits when people gather at Friday night services. This year the anniversary of my mother's passing fell within our trip week. My synagogue live streams services, and with our good connectivity I was able to remotely hear my mother's name mentioned and join in saying the kaddish prayer with the congregation. It was actually quite lovely to do this while watching the sun set over the lake. I did bring a yahrtzeit candle with me on the trip but opted not to light it - the things burn for 24 hours, which I figured might not be safe in camp. 

Yahrtzeit sunset

When I returned to the group I found another of Tom's cooking experiments well under way - skillet cornbread. I was still kind of full from Tom's yummy dinner of chicken, vegetables, and rice, but I can't resist cornbread. The bread was a little burned on the bottom, campfire style, but was quite tasty! Another of my luxuries was that I had brought along a few cans of caffeine-free Coke Zero. Given that it was our last night, I drank my final can. I must say that I had felt like a real goober bringing soda on a backcountry camping trip, but it turned out that Tom and Béla brought soda too.

Usually, when I call Valerie in the evening I wander off from camp into the woods to get some privacy, but having seen the bear not all that far from camp earlier in the day, I stayed a little closer to camp than usual. I am the subject of some teasing from the others because I bring a can of bear repellant spray (basically pepper spray in a can the size of a small fire extinguisher) with me on these trips, but I slept better that night knowing I had it nearby.

No bears in camp, but apparently a raccoon spent some time in my camp chair

Day 8: Saturday 9/13 

On Saturday we packed up our gear and, as is typical for this group, were ready to go 30 minutes ahead of our planned departure time. Let me say, we brought a lot of stuff! Enough to fill the motorboat pretty well. Thank goodness Jen had packed a bunch of her stuff into her kayak. Tom and I took the motorboat back to the marina. The others paddled back to South Creek where they loaded their kayaks and gear onto their cars and then met us at the marina. It had been Tom's idea to just meet back at the marina, and it worked well. When Jen and Béla arrived we had just finished unloading the gear, which we had stacked into four piles by owner (nonetheless, a few items wound up in the wrong cars).

Guiding the gear boat home

We said our goodbyes with a big hug, then each went our separate ways. It had been really good to spend some time with Jen, who we don't get to see very often since she moved away, and it was good for Tall Tom to get out on a little bit of an adventure.

I got on the road a bit later than the rest due to a pre-drive bathroom break. Well, that and because I made stop at a Stewart's to pick up a vanilla milkshake and a cup of coffee, as I have found that a combination of caffeine and sugar can keep me alert behind the wheel for many hours. Tom was still sharing his location from his phone so it was interesting to track that even though the two cars didn't communicate or coordinate our stops in any way, we remained about 20 minutes apart all the way to Delaware, where I stopped for dinner (a $15 tuna sandwich, which complemented the $7 Diet Coke I had purchased at an earlier gas stop - literal highway robbery) at the Joe Biden rest area before launching into the busy final stretch of roadway through the Baltimore to Washington region.

Lessons Learned 

There wasn't too much novel camp craft on this trip. I will say that I bring way too much food. I'm always nervous about running out of food, so I bring a zillion energy bars, bags of snacks, etc. On this trip matters were made worse because I packed for a typical trip, then added extra fresh food because we could. For example, I packed eight breakfasts, then in addition I bought bagels which served for two breakfasts, plus since I had a cooler at the last minute I bought a couple of yogurts which served as breakfast for another couple of days. Likewise, I had packed assuming our traditional high caloric consumption of full days of paddling. Still, I always bring too much food. 

I had all this food left over at the end of the trip

Since Rob wasn't part of the trip (we missed him!) I did pick up a few items to cover for some of the things he usually brings. His bag of tricks in his bottomless boat includes all kinds of fasteners and lights. I picked up a bag of small spring clips, which served well for hanging stuff on the clothes line as well as holding our picnic table tablecloth in place, and the cool multicolor LED light string which can be seen in the shelter photos. And in preparing for the trip I discovered that it's possible to buy First Aid kit replenishment packs. I'm sure it's cheaper to just grab Tylenol, Immodium, etc. from whatever supply one has at home, but given the damp nature of kayak trips I preferred to have meds in the sealed little single-serving packets you find in first aid kits, since I think they keep better than way.

Another one for the books. Where to next year?!

 

Saranac Lakes 2025 - Part II

This is Part II of a trip diary which starts here.

Day 3: Monday 9/7 

I'm an early riser, so on our first day in camp I got out of my tent at about 6:30AM to face a cold, cold early Monday morning. We didn't have any plans to get anywhere in a rush that morning and everyone else had the sense to stay in bed until the temps warmed up. They may have avoided the numb fingers and toes I experienced, but they missed out on a beautiful scene of early morning mist over the water, as the cold air condensed over the relatively warm water of the lake. 

Morning mist

Mid-morning Tom and I took the motorboat back to South Creek to retrieve the things which had been left behind in the previous day's chaos, including my cooler, my Jackery power system and giant solar panel (which we really didn't need, but which I had recently gotten for a steal at a community sale and wanted a chance to play with), and our Yonkers bagels. When we got back to camp the four of us had a fancy brunch of bagels (toasted over Tom's old school stove-top toaster), cream cheese and lox. 

Campsite bagel brunch

Tom was still feeling less Tall than usual, so in the afternoon he stayed in camp while the remaining three of us went out in our kayaks to explore across the lake and up into Weller Pond. We paddled about 6 miles round-trip, including a snack stop at the lovely if unpleasantly named Tick Island (poor branding!). Not a lot of miles for a full day of kayaking, but a good easy start to the trip after the previous day's cockup (to use a British term).

My dinner of chicken vegetable stew, which I had pre-cooked and frozen in containers at home, was well received, though the accompanying gummy bear dessert was met with less enthusiasm. This was despite the fact that they were organic gummy bears from Whole Foods which according to the package were "inspired by real fruit flavors". Maybe they would have been better received if they had been that other kind of gummy - wink, wink. Traditionally we're all exhausted at night from the day's paddling, but this was an easy day so we hung out fairly late (which means after 9 PM) in the shelter and enjoyed a campfire before all crawling into our tents.

Hanging out in the shelter

So, let me tell you a little about our campsite accommodations. One of the tricks of camping is to create an environment that's right for your trip. At one end of the spectrum you see car campers who bring so much stuff you wonder why they even left home, and at the other you see ultralight backpackers who live on ramen drained through their socks so they don't have to carry the extra weight of a strainer (my understanding is that by about the third day of the trip sock-strained ramen starts to taste pretty funny). We generally aim in between those extremes: more luxury than a backpacker, since we can carry more, without going overboard, so to speak.

I had mistakenly remembered that this campsite had only a "thunderbox", that is, an outhouse without the house part, but in fact it had a full outhouse, which a previous occupant had even left stocked with toiled paper and hand sanitizer. Humorously, someone had also added a gel seat pad to the toilet seat. More luxury!

Quite commodious

Tall Tom always brings the latest iteration of his portable battery-powered shower. Here's how it works: fill the black bucket half-way with lake water. Boil some water on the stove in the grey pot and then dash through the woods with it and add it to the black bucket, resulting in a good amount of reasonably warm water. While the water is still warm, get undressed and have a lovely shower dans le nature.

Campsite shower

This trip was definitely about abundance compared with our typical kayak-based camping lifestyle. Tom had brought a big ol' tank of cooking gas, so we had plenty of fuel for cooking as well as heating water for showers. I brought a fold-up egg crate camping mat to place on top of my usual backpacker camping cot and brought my big, big tent. I also brought three pillows (two small camping pillows plus an inflatable) so I didn't have to use my clothing dry bag as a pillow, plus I brought a sleeping bag liner for extra warmth. With the Jackery power system we never had to worry about running out of battery power (I usually am very mindful about preserving power, keeping my headlamp on low, my phone on airplane mode, and so on). I already mentioned the big pile of firewood we found on our arrival, so we had plenty of wood. I carted in a full five gallon jug of water, so we didn't immediately have to start focusing on filtering drinking water. And speaking of phones, we had solid cellphone connectivity, which I consider a mixed blessing. Years back, backcountry phone connectivity was very iffy - maybe you could find a particular spot around the campsite where if you were lucky you could get voice or maybe texting connectivity. Or maybe you'd have to keep toggling in and out of airplane mode until finally the phone caught a whiff of signal and connected. Of course, before that there was a time when there was no such thing as cell phone connectivity. This time around, we had solid LTE coverage all the time. That's good in that we were able to stay abundantly connected with home and get updated weather forecasts, but bad in that we never really fully disconnected from the outside world.

Big ol' solar charging station in action

Let me also talk about bear hangs. Perhaps the first lesson in backcountry camping is that at night you always suspend your food and other scented items from a tree to keep from attracting bears and other wildlife. On our previous trip to this campsite I had diligently gone through the hassle of doing a bear hang every night, while Tall Tom and Rob just stored their food in the shelter (in bear resistant bags, at least). I started once again to do a bear hang on this trip, but quickly figured that my storing my food away from the campsite wasn't going to make much difference in whether we attracted wildlife given that the other three group members were storing their food bags in the shelter. So, I gave up on my bear hang after one night and just stored my food (also in bear-resistant bags) in the shelter like everyone else. We were fine. We got a small amount of interest from mice and raccoons, but as far as I can tell bears never entered our campsite (though they were close by - more on this later).

Day 4: Tuesday 9/8

Once again I got out of my tent early and spent some chilly time walking around the campsite checking out the views. The morning was even colder than the day before, so I got a small fire going and put up water for coffee. Critters of some kind had gotten into our trash bag; I cleaned up the mess and put everything into a new bag, which we hung in a better spot. As each person woke up they gravitated towards the campfire, and hanging out by the fire on a chilly morning was so pleasant that we wound up again getting a slow start on our day's activities. Mid-morning Béla, Jen and I finally roused ourselves and set off to explore into Lower Saranac Lake. This involved retracing the path through the twisty Saranac River which Tall Tom and I had traversed in the motorboat a few days earlier - this time with less stress since the river was largely deserted and we were in kayaks. This path took us through the lock between Middle and Lower Saranac Lakes lakes. I am the expert lock operator of the group; on this trip I worked it in one direction and supervised while my lock-operating apprentice Jen worked it in the other.

Jen and Béla in the lock

We decided to go through the ponds towards Lake Flower and scout the large boat ramp at the park headquarters, since we were looking for better places to unload at the end of the trip rather than hauling our gear up the trail at South Creek. This boat launch looked like a good option - though later on Tom came up with an even better idea. 

Paddling through the lake's islands

The shorelines in some parts of the Saranac Lakes are quite rocky and steep with little opportunity to land kayaks, particularly if one of your party has a brand new (to him) kayak which he doesn't want to scratch up by landing on rocks. With a little exploration we eventually found a hospitable spot to land for lunch near campsite 26 on Pope Island. Our total paddling for the day was about 11.5 miles.

Back at camp, Tom made a tasty dinner of chicken sausage and peppers. I skipped the mint Milano cookies he provided for dessert not because I'm virtuous, but because they are dairy and I had just eaten meat (Jewish dietary rules stuff). 

Earlier I detailed my luxurious bedding arrangement on this trip: mini cot, egg crate mattress pad, three (tiny camping) pillows, a down sleeping bag and liner. Let me tell you, it's a very cozy arrangement once one is situated, but every night the process of getting myself into the sleeping bag liner and the sleeping bag, arranging the pillows, zipping myself into the sleeping bag, and arranging the bag's hood over my head all without totally knocking the mattress pad out of place was an acrobatic feat which usually took several tries. I think I probably made a lot of noise getting settled into bed at night. Maybe that's why Jen packed up her tent and moved it farther away from mine after night one. I will say, though, that once I got everything positioned right via my nightly contortionist act, I slept quite well almost every night including being comfortably warm despite the cold temperatures. 

Sunset at Camp

Another campsite photo

Day 5: Wednesday 9/9

It's amazing how quiet the Adirondacks are. In early September in the DC area the night air is still abuzz with cicadas, and you hear songbirds all day long. Up in the north country, on the other hand, I guess September is much further along towards winter. The birds and insects are mostly gone, except for the loons with their haunting calls. We didn't even see many small critters, other than the cute tiny little Adirondack red squirrels. The only time we heard noise was when we got the occasional aircraft overflight which Jen said was from the nearby Fort Drum.

"Birdlife" from Fort Drum

By Wednesday I had finally learned my lesson: while I still woke up early, I stayed in my tent reading the newspaper and watching some more of the Billy Joel documentary on my phone until around 8 AM, by which time the temp had crossed up into the 40's. Once we were all awake we ate the remaining bagels with butter, cream cheese and Tom's friend Pam's peach butter. I've never met Pam, but she provides lots of provisions for our trips in the form of things like the green beans she "puts up" each year and gives to Tom as a gift. 

Instead of kayaking, we went for a hike. The Adirondacks contain a series of lakes, and one of the things people historically do is paddle a lake, then portage, or carry, their boat and stuff over to the next lake. In my opinion, portaging isn't all that much fun, but the portage trails between lakes are in some cases worthy hikes in and of themselves. We had heard that the canoe carry trail from Weller Pond to Saginaw Bay was such a nice hike, including a section of old growth woods, and we decided to check it out. The four of us piled into the motorboat and made quick work of the trip across Middle Saranac Lake and up into Weller Pond - the very same route which had explored by kayak on Monday.

Heading to Weller Pond (Jen says driving a boat is like driving a tractor)

The hike was, in fact, quite pretty, and there was one section of the woods where the nature of the trees changed - fewer scraggly understory trees, more big, mature trees. Given the harsh environment of the ADKs this was not lush California old growth forest, but we think we found the rare spot which had never been logged. When we got to the Saginaw Bay end of the trail we came across two old guys (even by our standards) who had kayaked over and were doing the same walk in the opposite direction. Not surprisingly, we saw them again on the way back.

Hike photos

It was a fun hike, but it was a workout for Tall Tom, who as I've mentioned, is not up to his usual tallness. When we got back to camp he relaxed while the rest of us showered. I've got to say, a warm shower, even with lake water (actually, the lake water is pretty clean) is a life restoring experience. I don't know what it is about kayak camping, maybe it's the time spent in wet neoprene clothing, but after a few days you start to smell really bad. In my case I pick up an odor which is something like rancid Cheez Doodles mixed with goat droppings, and it's good to wash it off every once in a while. I also shaved both my face and head, making me the only trip participant to freshen their hairdo during the trip.

Freshly showered

After my shower I put on fresh, clean clothes, which is a luxury when backcountry camping. Except that I had packed for slightly warmer temperatures than we wound up having, so a couple of the warm layers I had brought just in case - a merino wool base layer and my scratchy old wool sweater - got worn for the whole week. Hey, supposedly you can wear wool for a long time before it gets stinky. 

It was Jen's turn to make dinner, which was salmon croquettes with rice pilaf, with a topping of cooked beets and carrots. Dessert was no-bake cookies ("doo doo cookies", according to Tom) which never quite solidified but which were yummy nonetheless. As further proof of how lazy the local wildlife is, Jen accidentally left the leftover salmon out overnight on the picnic table, and in the morning it was untouched.

Another pretty sunset

 

Apostle Islands: Sea Caves and Home

This entry is part of my write-up of a September 2024 trip to The Apostle Islands. The story begins here.

Monday 9/9

Monday's conditions were benign and so we headed out to see the Sand Island Sea caves. First, we made the roughly three mile crossing to see the historic Sand Island lighthouse, built  in 1881. From there we paddled down the island's coast, and WOWZA! Whatever we had been expecting, the sea caves exceeded it. The Apostles are sandstone islands, and over the millennia the water has etched out beautiful caves into the islands' shorelines. The caves on Sand Island aren't super tall, but they're deep and form a maze of twisty passages, each unique, that you can explore by kayak. Some of the passages are big enough to paddle all the way through: go in one spot and come out another. And the sound of the water in the caves is great too. It's all super cool. We all had giant grins plastered on our faces the whole time we were there. We spent a lot of time there, and we took many, many pictures - some of which are included below. Pictures are better than trying to describe it. We were even lucky enough that another paddler happened by, and he took a group shot of us. 

When we finally pulled ourselves away from the beauty of the caves we paddled down the island to the dock / campsite area, where we took a lunch break. Then we paddled back to camp.

When we got back, we faced a decision. We were due to spend two more nights at York Island, but we had pretty much fully paddled the immediate area - we had come to York Island from the east, we had explored west in our visit to Sand Island, going south would take us back to the launch, and to our north was just the big, open lake. Plus, we enjoyed the sea caves so much and wanted to see more, with the hitch being that the other two big sea cave sites - Devil's Island, and Meyers Beach on the mainland, weren't within reasonable paddling distance of our campsite. So we made the momentous decision - never done before on one of our trips - to return from camping one day early so we could see the Meyers Beach caves. The plan was to break camp Tuesday morning, paddle back to Little Sand Bay, load all the gear into the cars, drive to Meyers Beach, launch there and paddle to the nearby sea caves, paddle back, reload the cars, then, because we figured we'd be too lazy to make camp again, stay in a hotel and head for home first thing Wednesday. Sounds relaxing, right?

I should mention that this change of plans also helped with one of our trip constraints: both Béla and Rob and  needed to be home for commitments back home Friday night/Saturday morning, and staying ashore Tuesday night would give them a little more travel buffer by allowing them an earlier start for home on Wednesday.

Monday's dinner was my Middle Eastern Chicken. I like the idea of this dish, but having made it on two trips I've decided that I don't really like the seasoning - it's going to take some adjustments to the recipe before I bring this dish again.

The "money shot"

More Sand Island Sea Cave photos:

Sand Island lighthouse

Tuesday 9/10

On Tuesday our goal was - MORE SEA CAVES! We said goodbye to the islands, broke camp, and paddled back to Little Sand Bay. Once back we started loading all our gear and kayaks, with a plan to eat lunch at the nice picnic tables at Little Sand Bay and then head to the Meyers Beach launch. All of a sudden Tom realized he couldn't find his phone and came to the conclusion that he must have left it on the driftwood log he had been sitting on back at the island while he was waiting for the rest of us to finish packing our boats (Tom is a fast packer!). I understand the kind of frustration and anger you can experience when you make a mistake like that, and after a moment of indecision (Was it worth it going back? But there were some great pictures on the phone!), with a combination of adrenaline borne of frustration and basic tall person strength, Tom hoisted his kayak back off the roof of my car like it was a toy and headed back down to the beach to paddle back to York Island, which would take about an hour each way. And I heard him exclaim, ere he went out of sight, "You guys go on to Meyers Beach, we'll meet up tonight!"

Tall Tom heads off to recover his phone - or so he thinks

By the time Rob and Béla finished loading their boats and we had eaten lunch, about 45 minutes had passed since Tom's launch and the three of us resolved that we'd just wait around for him to return and then all go to Meyers Beach together, even though that would mean a later launch. Suddenly, long before we expected him to be back, we saw Tom walking towards us, smiling. He said that while paddling he had had time to think, and realized partway to the island that his phone had been in the pocket of his PFD all along. Crisis and complications averted!

After that excitement we hopped into the cars and drove the 20 minutes or so to Meyers Beach, a popular launch and park since it offers a nice beach and easy paddling access to sea caves - it's only about one mile from the launch to the caves. However, the place does include one unexpected barrier, in that the parking lot sits on a bluff well above the lake, so you have to carry your kayak down a long flight of stairs to get to the launch beach. Forty seven stairs, for those counting (who counts stairs?!). Admittedly, the risers were shallower than a regular flight of steps, so we carried our kayaks "only" up and down the equivalent of maybe three stories. Trust me, it was a workout, which required our group of four old men to rest for a bit after both the down and up trips. 

The Meyers Beach sea caves were every bit as spectacular as Sand Island, but had somewhat different characteristics. They were grander in scale, featuring very tall caverns; however, there weren't as many passages to paddle through. In addition, conditions were a little rougher than when we had visited Sand Island and so we were more hesitant to poke into the caves for fear of being caught by big waves while inside. The waves did, though, create really cool and thunderous sound. 

Stairs down to the Meyers Beach launch

Meyers Beach sea caves

Splashy on the way back

On the way back the water conditions picked up, as we by then knew they would given the time of day. Again, nothing challenging or dangerous, but I for one was ready to be done with wind and waves! By the time we left Meyers Beach our day had included two paddling trips, breaking camp, and loading and unloading the boats several times, and so we were all too tired to spend any significant time behind the wheel. Instead, we figured we'd have dinner and get a hotel in the nearby town of Ashland (large enough to have a bunch of chain hotels) and get an early start for home on Wednesday. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant overlooking the lake, where we feasted on Wisconsin's own cheese curds and more whitefish (fried this time). We split two appetizers, cheese curds and pretzel bites, and wound up dipping the cheese curds in the jalapeno cheese sauce which had come with the pretzels. My cardiovascular health surely took a hit from fried cheese dipped in cheese, but after a week of camping, the indulgence was delicious!

Cheese curds!

Strangely, Ashland's hotels were all fully booked, so we wound up staying further up the road in Ironwood, where I discovered something that was new to this east coast city boy - apparently in the Upper Mid-West people go out cruising for multi-day excursion in their ATV/UTV vehicles. One hotel we stayed in had a bin of complimentary shop towels for guests to use in cleaning off their motorcycles or ATVs so guests wouldn't use the towels from their rooms for such dirty tasks, while in Ironwood some Mad Max lookin' vehicles parked next to ours in the parking lot. 

I'll also mention that the night we stayed in Ironwood was the night of the Presidential debate. I watched it with Rob and Béla in their room. Béla, a proud Hungarian, nearly hit the ceiling when Mr. Trump cited Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán as a character witness. Tom wisely ignored the whole debate thing. Here's a musical remix of a debate highlight for those who missed it. 

UTV's parked next to us at the hotel

Wednesday 9/11 and Thursday 9/12

There's not too much to write about the trip home, as Tom and I basically hoofed it home as fast as we could. We took a different route home - south through Wisconsin then east by Chicago, while Rob and Béla went back the way we had come via the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Tom and I spent the night near Toledo, where we had dinner at a cool local bar/pizza place/live music venue in Maumee called The Village Idiot. Think JV's, but larger and maybe marginally more hip. Food took forever to arrive, but the pizza was great and the drinks were dirt cheap. Smooth sailing all the way, except that just a few hours from home we got stuck on the highway for an hour and a half due to an accident which closed the whole highway at the Allegheny Tunnel. But we made it home safe and sound.

The Village Idiot (looks bigger in the panoramic photo than in reality)

Foggy, pretty morning on the Interstate

Remains of the wreck which closed the Allegheny tunnel

All in all, another extremely successful trip. Beautiful scenery, great paddling, no one died (almost doesn't count). More total days than usual, but fewer days camping and fewer days paddling - but still a great trip! While I do a lot of the research and legwork in advance of our trips, I usually feel like a lightweight in terms of group gear contributions during the trip itself. Rob and Tom bring water filtration, a complete kitchen, shower, clotheslines, etc., while I bring just my sunny disposition. Thus, I was thrilled on this trip to have been able to have provided the solutions to a couple of gear challenges. Béla forgot to bring his spray skirt, and paddling without one would have been a total non-starter in Great Lakes conditions. Fortunately, I had packed an extra so I was able to lend him one. Likewise, Rob found himself without a headlamp since he had brought the wrong batteries, and I was able to help him out because I had packed an extra.

Not too many campcraft notes from this trip:

• I'd like to make myself a little doormat for in front of my tent - I'm tired of kneeling down in the dirt/sand/mud when getting in and out of the tent. I might get a second inflatable pillow to use instead of a drybag under my knees. 
• While my continuing old-iPhone-as-GPS experiment was more successful this year than last, it still needs fine-tuning. For one thing, it's difficult to see the screen out on the water. I think I'll experiment with a different case, and maybe wearing it on a cord around my neck rather than keeping it out under the deck bungies. I should have tested it more extensively before the trip. 
• My ultra-packable but therefore very thin tent continues to degrade - the mesh is starting to give way, and I've patched a number of holes in the fabric. I think it's good for another trip or two. 
• Tall Tom's new Jetboil Basecamp stove is awesome! Works even when wet! 
• Oh, and I have to mention the King of Chairs. After last year's I spent considerable space in my write-up grousing about Tall Tom and Rob's fancy big chairs and how I was like the little kid with my small camping chair. Well this year I showed up with a bigger, better chair than any of them! Arms! Cupholder! Storage pocket! Thank you, Amazon!