Beaver Basin Wilderness

I ended up back in the woods over 4th of July weekend, backpacking with F.Y.S. and Sir S. We (I) had grand plans for how many miles we would put on over the 4 days and our hope was that we would be able to have campsites along the beach. How cool would that be?

Uh, no. It being a holiday weekend, the area was busy with other backpackers and many of the beach sites were unavailable. Only slightly disappointed, we went with our back-up plan, which was Trappers Lake, a 6.5 mile hike down the lake shore and a half mile inland; not our ideal, but not so bad. Also, because it was predicted to be hot and humid we opted to stay all three nights at the same campsite and day trip from there. We had no idea how fortunate that change of plans was and how wonderfully quiet, beautiful and private our site would be. My goodness...

I actually didn't take many pictures of Trappers Lake, but trust me when I say it was beautiful. Heavily forested right up to the lake shore and our site had trees that were leaning out over the water, a great place to sit and eat our meals while dangling our feet in the water. We commented many times on our good fortune.

This is Beaver Creek and it flows into Lake Superior. We spent an afternoon playing in here and on the beach, but the flies, oh, they were relentless. We either had to wear long pants while we played on the beach or else we were laying in the water of the stream with our head nets on so the flies couldn't bite us. But the thing is, there were no flies at Trappers Lake. If we had gotten the beach sites that we wanted, we wouldn't have been able to enjoy our time because of the flies. What a great change of plans that turned out to be.

I thought this was a Loon from a distance, but it's a Merganser, with 24 babies. Look at the ones on her back. I'm guessing she adopted some of these, perhaps the other mother died? I can't imagine that she would have hatched all of them herself. But how stinking cute is this???

My companions enjoying one of the many beautiful vistas we found.

Write this one up as another successful trip.

Silence

My life is anything but silent and paths have taken me in amazing directions. Between the new job, KCSAR, training, studying, classes, family, friends and a little bit of adventuring, this poor little site is suffering. I know, it's just that life is packed full and I'm sure you know that blog posts don't get slapped up quickly. They take time to edit and state your intent in a meaningful way. I hope you'll forgive me if I stay away just a little bit longer.
I'll see you soon....I promise.