mmmmmaaaaaaapppppssssss

Part 10 (the camping trip)

And part 11

When it rains....

We had some NASTY weather this weekend. Made me glad we didn't hike. Now I know we said we were gonna hike no matter what, but we're dumb young people. What do we know? We had some cool lightening, fast winds and LOUD thunder. I'm talking I though someone had hit me while I was driving because the thunder shook the car.

Looking at the forecast for this upcoming weekend already. It isn't looking to grand, we're in that glorious Southern Illinois wet season. Soon the Nile will flood and dry up, hopefully making for some good farming.

Well that is all I have for ya right now.

We'll only do 12miles

So many hikes have started out that way it seems. To kick off the weekend my dad and I camped up at Garden of the Gods. We hiked the observation trail as the sun rose, in other words we ate our oatmeal in God's own breakfast nook. Well we were a team of three again this time around. Just the Blocker brothers and their dad. We hiked from the Lusk Creek area to a spot just south of Herod. Lusk creek is always a beautiful area to go through. It's nice being on this end of the trail now. Seems like there is just so much more to see. Lots of rock formations and the like. We had a few interesting creek crossings but none were anything like Max Creek, which is most fortunate.

I'd have to say that this hike took us upon some of the most interesting people yet. First person we met was an old cowboy like fella. Had his hat and horse, even spurs. We talked to him for a little while and got the standard response when we told him where we were ending our hike. Huh... We get a lot of people that will ask things like that "Where you all plan on camping?" "Near Cedar Grove road." "Huh..." And that is how it goes, the people we run across seem rather like locals, but never seemed to know where we are going. I suppose that makes us seem more like locals to them. But they're probably in a rut where they ride their damn horses on the same trail all the time, never go out to see what else is there. Which is something that I'd have a bit of trouble understanding. I love Giant City, but there are so many other places to hike around here. So many new things to see. I couldn't just hike there all the time. Let move on to the next interesting group we met. A couple of ol' silver hairs were hiking on another trail and we ended up meeting them at a junction. Well it seems they were looking for some fella who had been living out there with his wife and kid for a few decades now. They asked us if we had seen a house or anything of the like. We had not. So they told us of how they ended up where they are and kept on a jabbering. About the time they said they could tell we were brothers 'cause we had, "Nice teeth," was when we fixed on getting out of there. Dad told 'em to let whoever they were looking for that we said, "Hi," and we were off again laughing.

Well nothing overly eventful happened after we ran into them till about the time we came upon One Horse Gap. This was a cool little area with some bizarre rock formations. Naturally we had to climb up on some despite how tired our legs and feet were. You see... we had finished that 12miles a little bit ago and were well on our way to pushing 14. Most unfortunate part of this all is that the map was showing we had at least 3.5mi er so left. Well we had no other choice but to push on and boy did we learn something about how well this trail is maintained. It seems like they were running a new trail through here... maybe? Or they just decided to nail a damn blaze to every tree in every direction they could. The place was a damn catacomb. But we persevered and with our expert navigational skills only took one wrong turn and we figured that out fast. So we pressed on as we had to and enjoyed the gentle down hill over the last few miles on the way to the truck. We ended up hiking a solid 18miles.

No, it's a lizard

So this was a big weekend. We went camping for the first time and I am quite sore. This wasn't a park the truck and carry equipment 20ft kinda trip either. This was an all out backpacking adventure. We loaded up our packs and set under way. After the first mile I knew that I had bitten off a bit more than I thought. But hey, we were past the point of no return. So on we went, I had to preserver. Overall the hike was a good one, very minimal on road time. Lots of beautiful terrain.

We set off at about 10-o-clock A bit earlier than I had expected, drive went well.
I find myself lacking inspiration while writing this, I may come back later and finish up but till then here are the hard facts:

• Hiked 22.5 miles
• Shawnee Restaurant and Lounge is a nice little place in Eddyville
• Camped about a half mile east of Cedar Grove Rd.
• Listened to This American Life and NPR
• Camped under the stars
• Owl woke me
• Food was all right while camping
  

the photos

A quickie for ya,

Mike, why have there not been any photo updates in so long? Well you see, I've grown tired of caring my camera along. I really need to get a smaller one for these kinds of trips.

Now for the words

Well if you scroll down just a bit you can few the map from this Saturday as well as the past few maps that I had not posted yet. Get what I mean now by GIANT switchback? Anyhow, this past trip was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it a lot. Our family was down in the area for the Easter holiday. That meant a big weekend of hiking for my brother, father, and I. We tossed around the idea of a bit of camping but decided against it, which ended up for the best. Heavy rain on Friday night/Saturday morning. This of course meant we had a wet trail on Saturday.

Let's begin with a bit about the hiking on Friday. We (Scott, Dad, and I) went out cruising about the Shawnee area as we often do. This time we cruised past Trigg Tower, one of the oldest fire towers still remaining in Southern Illinois. The tower is about 70ft tall with some steep stairs for the climb to the top. Was a pretty neat view from the top, bet it was even more amazing before the trees surrounding it had grown to as tall as they are now.

Just a little ways north of the Trigg is a trail crossing for the river to river (some old trail I had never heard of). But keep on the road a bit more then take a few rights and bam! You are at Jackson's Hallow pronounced Haller, it's the south after all. But regional dialects aside, this place was a cool little canyon. Our dad was telling us that it was one of the few locations that he hadn't managed to visit yet, and that it was a climbing mecca of sorts. Well he was certainly right about that, we got to the parking lot and saw cars from at least 4 different states. As we hiked around we saw climbers everywhere, it was cool and made me wish I had done it more. That isn't to say it's too late for me to start now... Anyway. We eventually climbed down into the hallow and hiked to the creek down in the bottom. This was a cool little creek, as they always are. Eventually we found ourselves back where we had stared only 20-30ft lower. This became and issue as we didn't much feel like hiking all the way back around to where we had come down before. Fortunately we found a cool little way up that was a lot of fun. After a bit more cruising and site seeing (and memory lane for dad). We found ourselves at dinner with the family.

Saturday, this hike ended up being our longest yet, about 14mi. We saw a lot of cool things about half the hike was on road unfortunately, but it was mixed in, so not too bad. The Spillway on the little Cache lake No.1 was cool to hike over. It is near and old train bridge where there were some cool rock formations. As we continued on we hiked some four wheeler trails which sucked. If I might take a sidebar for a sec, which I might 'cause it's my blog, I do not like horses and four wheelers. They have there places, but I hate sharing a trail with them. They make it muddy and unbearable, eroding the trail away. End sidebar. So this continued on till we ended up at rt 45. We had about a mile hike down that till we turned down a country road and eventually ended up back in the woods. Now came a trail junction that was a bit interesting. The trail was heavily blazed on the way to the north but the book and quad sheet both said that we should be heading on the path to the east. Well it isn't like it'd matter much both trails end up intersecting again later then heading out of the Max Creek area. So we went north 'cause it had the blazes (later learned that both trails have the river to river blaze). The trail headed straight north for a while then went down along Max Creek. A cool creek that we had to cross too many times. You might have noticed that I tend to describe every creek, river, etc as cool. Well that is because I like water. I like how much power it has to reshape the wilderness around us. More on point though, the three crossings. Well the creek was just too wide and fast to allow us to hop rocks across it. We had to take off our boots and hold our packs above our heads.

Oh noes a cliffhanger! I'm tired and going to sleep. So if you want to see the rest of this post read it again tomorrow.

Update:

Ok, so here are the fun tails of the creek crossings. As I said before we were gonna have to ford this one. So on the first crossing Scott and Dad make it across no issues but me, I fell. And BOY was that water cold! Nothing got damaged, cell phone in safe place GPS waterproof etc. Rung out my shorts and changed my shirt and we were underway again. Of course not 100 yards down the way ANOTHER CROSSING! "Nuts," is what we said because well, we never curse or anything like that. So we again searched for another way across but ended up having to ford it again. This time Brother Scott slipped and dunked his boots into the water. That sucks. Well we boot up again and move on. This time we might have made it 150 yards before the next crossing. Well we didn't waste much time at all, just took our boots off and went on in. This time being dad's turn to get wet. Well he tossed his boots across and managed to have a sock fall out and float away down stream. We were proper tired of taking our boots on and off so much so when we came to the next crossing we found away to climb along the cliff side and bypass the last two crossings. Now before you say, why didn't you just find away to stay on the whatever side of the creek each time? We looked around and did try to, but sometimes the cliffs are just too steep to climb and it is unfortunately faster to de-boot and cross. Well after all this business with creek crossings it was nice just to hike in the woods for a while. Once out of the woods we hit the road again for the final stretch.

Over all it was a very enjoyable hike and I'm looking forward to this Saturday. Odds are we will be camping too. Should be a good time. If anyone has some good backpacking recipes, please leave 'em in the comments!

Holy maps batman!

Part 9 (most recently hiked) As you can see I had some issues with GPS signal. The blue line is the route I believe we hiked.

Part 8 Short but Sweet

The switchback from hell.

yeah yeah yeah

Alright I know it has been awhile. The weather got nice out here and I was busy being a computer nerd so I was not paying attention to you folks. Not to mention I'm now two maps behind. So I'll give you a quick update then maybe a bio tonight. Well we hiked from Rebman rd. to Dutchman's Lake in great time. Was a beautiful day and we managed the 7.5 hike by noon. We're getting rather fast, of course 90% of the hike was on road. So really nothing to extravagant to say about the hike, other than it was a great time.

I suppose I could tack in a scouting update with this post too. Headed out to the tunnel hill area again this week. Found a few possible ending locations. Mainly though it was a great day for cruising beautiful Southern Illinois Weather here.

Anyhow have fun kids, stay in school.

I can see for miles and miles and miles...

So as you may have noticed, no map yet, no bios, no blah blah blah. Been neglecting the blog again. I even went on a scouting trip and posted nothing on it. When did I go... I think it was Monday. Had the weather looked better I had found the perfect place to hike to after camping for the night. But as I checked the weather this morning Sunday is looking wet, and if you can stay dry... why not? Really that is about all I have to say, I had some fun cruising about country roads but there wasn't much to be noted overall.

Part 7

Yeah I had a more interesting title while I was on trail, but I've forgotten it. We hiked our longest distance yet this time. 12 miles. It was a good hike, lots of switchbacks. Well more accurately one HUGE set of switch backs. After awhile I started using the GPS to see how far we were from the truck (at the end point) and we were never more than a mile away from it. Most the time close to a half mile away. Issue being 200ft cliffs to climb down then back up. That was no matter though it was a very enjoyable hike we had great weather despite the constant forecast of rain.

Our goal to set out early was successful this time too. It did result in slightly smaller numbers than normal, but I think the events of the night before contributed to a few people missing the hike as well. Most the crew was in attendance though. Not overly certain how next weeks hike will be, I have no doubt that it'll be a good time. But I'd love to have the weather work out so we could camp. Not sure where we'd finish the hike if we did camp, but then that is what maps are for. I'll have to look into the next spot either tomorrow morning or Tuesday. I know that we'd be able to make the 8mile er so hike to Dutchman's Lake without issue. Provided we got the same start we did. The other issues would be tents and other gear. Only about four of us have all the needed equipment. There are tents and I believe bags available for rent from the rec center's base camp. That just means someone will have to lug some rather heavy tents. These are all logistics to be worked out later though.

I'll have a map update for you hopefully later to day, we'll see how motivated I stay. Also I have a few ideas for a couple bios so should be a fun week in updates.

Scouting trip

Finally managed to drag myself back out for another scouting trip. It had been too long since the last one. I had forgotten how much I enjoy just cruising around these places. I had found what will most likely be our ending spot for tomorrow. Then I called my dad. He came up with a suggestion that I really liked, Friday hike from Wayside to Ferne Clyffe then camp in Ferne Clyffe for the night. I was on board. It would have meant that we'd need to get our stuff together kinda quickly but we had enough time. Well as it turns out there are people who are not done with their days till 5pm so that'd be a rather late start for them, too late really. I don't know really, some times I just want to start heading out on my own getting tired of having to coordinate with all these people. Back to the phone conversation with my dad though. I had only brought the maps for the area I had planned on hiking. So he lead me via phone too the next trail head at Dutchman's Lake. A really nice looking reservoir where there were a few people fishing. Well the weather is looking like it will be nice tomorrow during the day at least. So hopefully we'll have a good hike, not sure how I'll feel if we don't.

Happy Saint Paddy

Well it almost rhymes I suppose. First! Some maps!

BAM!

Now some details. Well I'm certainly a bit behind on updates. Spring break will do that to ya though. Been havin' fun with my mates, playing pool and the like. In that regard I am getting a bit better but still rather suck. But on to the details that this little blog is supposed to contain. The hike! Well it was a beautiful day on Thursday. A bit muddy but you'll have that. There was a bit of an issue at the end of the hike, but that has been resolved so I shan't be getting into it. We hiked our way out of Giant City and into Crab Orchard. We also passed through Antioch Cemetery, the way-point is on the map. Right before we got to the rocky comfort road crossing we also came across an old foundation and chimney. It looked like there were two different buildings there over time. It is just neat to come across old buildings like that.

Saturday, this was a most interesting hike. I really hope to head back out there because it was beautiful. Panther Den lives up to the reputation I had heard of it. Unfortunately though we got a very late start and were unable to spend much time exploring the area. We had our sister come pick us up in Wayside otherwise we might have not gotten home till around 6:30-7:00. At which point it would have been dark and cold. Friday was a day of rain so that meant Saturday's trail was very muddy. And that is never very fun hiking. That is all I can really think to mention at this time, it's St. Patrick's day after all and I need another glass of whiskey.

It's raining, it's pouring....

Not in picture: Me, that is what I get for forgetting the tripod. Oh and Andy is running around somewhere, peeing on things would be my guess.

Well maybe not pouring per-say. But it was raining as we set out towards the trail head. Once we had set out though the rain had stopped. Kasia was with us again, for those not paying attention she was not here last time. Bryan joined us, as well as Anthony and his dog Andy. It was fun having dog along. And I hadn't seen Anthony since freshman year so it was great catching up with him.

Our hike was a bit more easy going that usual. I'd wager it was due to the fact that it was a bit shorter than normal, I had predicted around 7 miles, ended up being just shy of 8, so Kasia doesn't get to kill me \o/. The trail took us through the town of Makanda. Always a fun place to go through, we had lunch at the park there. Played around a bit, on the swing, and some basketball. I had us take a few small detours so I could show everyone some of the monuments that denoted the original property corners of Giant City. They are little concrete structures set by the CCC back in the 1930's. Once we had completed the hike we went home and showered up then headed back to the Lodge for some of their all you can eat family chicken dinner. Delicious.

Meriwether Mike

Ran another backtrack today. This time was a bit shorter, only 6 miles. Few things to make note of, first off the blazes from the Goodwin trail head to where it picks up on the old river to river are crap. There is enough of them... I think. The issue isn't amount it's that they are brown. Yes brown diamonds nailed to trees in a forest. Very hard to notice. See they redid the trail from Hutching's Creek to Goodwin. And I can understand why. It needs to be understood that I don't like to double back on the same trail when I don't have to. So today I didn't. There was enough of the old trail left that I could still travel along it, and I had the path on my gps if I had lost it. The old trail was heavily eroded and had a large number of trees across it. They had the whole forest to fall in and they choose right across the path. I suspect it is a result of the May 8th storm. For those of you not from the area there was a major wind storm last spring and by major I mean winds of 109mph. And if you are from the area and didn't know what storm I was talking about.... that was one heavy rock you were living under.

I was quite pleased with the weather again today. When I got into my truck at my aunt's house it was raining, but by the time I reached Hutching's Creek it was sunny and warm. Loved it. Once at the creek I figured out that if I hadn't led us down the hill, shortcutting the switchback, we'd have managed to stay on trail. So yeah... my bad on this one. The creek crossing was interesting. To walk from blaze to blaze would get you quite wet. That is the thing about creek and river crossings though, unless you put a bridge in they are gonna change. If I might get a bit philosophical for a moment, creeks and rivers, well any body of water for that matter are beautiful in the way that they are living changing things. As water flows it erodes the bed and changes where sand or gravel bars are, even moving entire boulders. Beautiful in its destruction. But that is why creek crossings don't always work. So basically once you hit the creek, find a way across and look for this point: N 37d33.691m W 89d24.027m This is where the trail meets up with the east side of the creek. I opted to put the coordinates in the form that my Garmin has them this time rather than the Google earth format. If you're gonna use 'em odds are it'll be on a handheld gps. And for the record the only difference is that Google goes out to decimal seconds while the typical handheld gps does decimal minutes.

The creek was strangely beautiful. A nice warm sun, only sounds to be heard was the squawking of a bird and the wind as it blew through the leaves. Not even the water flowing was making any noise. I should have spent more time out here while I was in college.

Solo mission

me, over exposed
Well I decided to do a little backtracking today. Went back to Rowan road and hiked the little cedar loop trail. The backtracking sucked, as it always does. I had to go about 3.5 miles in before hitting the loop trail. It was a beautiful day though made for some great hiking. The lake was calm and beautiful. Was nice to be on my own for a while. The total mileage was just a bit shy of 11. I was able to locate the turns that we should have taken last weekend. In fact here is the way-point for the creek crossing south of little cedar. Lat: 37d36m06.29s North Long: 89d17m58.81s West I would also recommend if you choose to approach little cedar loop trail from the landreth side you take the turn to head south before crossing the spillway. It'll be easier to take the trail counterclockwise. Well that is all I have for now, we will be hitting the trail hard this week as it is spring break!

Strange goings ons here...

Every now and then we cross through strange dimensions on the trail... areas of utter limbo if you will. Places like the never ending hills of Bald Knob Wilderness area. Where you keep climbing up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and well... I think you've got the idea. One such place exists in the northern part of Alto Pass. If you're not careful you will miss such areas... which may be the better for your sanity.

You see, this place we crossed through. This nexus of worlds if you will, is a sight more often seen in areas of higher population density. I couldn't be sure as to why it is seen there more often. Maybe it's because there are just so many people in either world cross over is bound to happen, but I digress. How do we know that such a plane was being crossed as we hiked along you ask? It wasn't because strange beings, quite simply a few sings stated it. For about a quarter mile ever intersection we crossed was that of Cedar and Olive. I could understand seeing it twice.. maybe, due to a U-shaped road or what have you. But more than that... is absurd and clearly a sign of two worlds crossing each other briefly.

Well, maybe the trail mix was a bit too old you say, or the sun was rather hot that day. I still hold to what I saw though. Somewhere drifting around north of Alto Pass is a bridge to another world, so be careful as you my wander through it by accident.

Better knowing us...

And now better knowing us part 2 of 10. This week we'll be learning a bit more about Kasia (Ka-sha). She is a bit more mysterious than the rest of us, the quite type. We'd suspect that she is up to no good if it weren't for the fact that she is always smiling.

One would suspect that being one of the few girls in this group she'd be in a more motherly don't be doing that boys, kind of role. I mean that is what the movies and TV would have had her portrayed as. Unfortunately this is not the case, we simply have no voice of reason on our hikes. Instead she adds to the oddity of the group. Her own geekyness to blend with ours. Yes despite the fact that we are spending all this time out doors and with nature, we are really a group of nerds for the most part. That is beside the point however... or was that the point. Frankly I just don't recall anymore.

Back to the bio, I cannot really think of much more to add, as I do not know much about Kasia. (other than that she spells her name funny) Really I'm not sure we should trust her as much as we do... always smiling. What IS she hiding behind that devious look. Was she really in St. Louis last weekend? Or was she at some sort of secret meeting of an evil organization of... evil... I suppose we cannot be too certain in these trying times. Though if she was at an evil meeting St. Louis would not be a bad place to have it.

You buy all this coffee....

and you never drink it.

The Group

Julie, Kevin(new guy), Drew, Luke, Adam, Doc, Scott, DanBo

and up front Me

Hope you like inside jokes that odds are you will never get, 'cause well... that wont be the last one. It was a good hiking day, we've had great luck with the weather so far. Hoping that will hold for us, but I'm sure we'll be hiking in the rain at least once. We managed the furthest hike yet today, 10.3mi. This weeks updates will include another bio, and I'm sure at least one little bit of musing on my part. Right now though I am just too tired. So just the raw details is what you'll get for now. We were on road for the first 4.5mi where we crossed through the glorious town of Alto Pass. Also we traveled through the limbo Cedar and Olive, more on that later though. Once off road we had some muddy terrain but nothing too bad, some minor elevation changes overall though much easier that last weekend. We ended up missing the turn to head up the west side of little cedar so we cut east and took an atv trail up till we intersected with the river to river trail again. Easy going and no issues from there regarding loss of trail.

I suppose I've enough energy to regal you lot with another tail of this trail. If you'll simulate some wavy lines and chime like music we'll get this flashback started. The year is twenty ought seven, I'm in my sophomore year of college and it's a bright sunny day out. I decided to revisit a trail where I had a good time with my father and brother years ago. The Little Cedar Loop Trail. Now we're heading down Landreth road and already things are interesting. The road and had deep ruts and was great fun to maneuver the minivan down. So, we got to the trail head and made our way along the loop. Played around on the spillway for a bit and continued on. I hate to admit this but I didn't bring a compass, a map, or my GPS. POOR PLANNING on my part. This resulted in us heading east for way too long. So as you might be figuring out, yes this was not the first time I hiked this part of the river to river. Once we got to the end I got a ride with some mountain biker back to the van. Was lucky to have run into them, as it would have been a long walk home. I was happy that Doc was able to join us this weekend because he was one of the people with me when we went that wrong direction.

Mud Mud Mud

Well, I went out scouting again today, trying to see if we could set up a car near the Little Cedar Lake trail head. Doesn't seem likely. Though I do believe one of the areas I was checking out was the wrong one. I have a very bad habit of forgetting to grab the maps. It also doesn't help that I often scout alone, as I have not yet mastered the read map while driving as my father has.

As I headed back towards Carbondale I decided just to have a go at Landreth Road again. This is the actual access point for the Little Cedar Loop trail. When I first went down this road on my own, about 2yrs or so ago it was a rough drive. The major storm we had on May 8th last year did not help that at all. That storm simple covered the road with trees completely blocking it off. Well almost a year later and they have cleared the trees, but the road is worse than ever. While I took the minivan through and around some deep ruts before I was afraid to take my truck on what was there now. First let me give you and idea of my truck. It is a 95 Chevy 2500, it is lifted and has 4wd. So I clicked in the 4 wheel and set on down the road. Should I have turned back? If I could have maybe, but I was loving it too much. I powered down through ruts and ditches and over narrow passes. Had some major washout in one area, was barely wide enough for my truck. The biggest surprise for me though was when I got to the other end and a truck was already there! I didn't see the owner for said vehicle so I couldn't say how long it might have been there. I turned my self around and powered back. This is when I had the closest call. Had to stay on the far left of the narrow road, didn't think I'd manage the huge hole on the right. Well I started up and felt the truck start to slip. This was no good if I got stuck I'd be screwed. I had no means of getting my truck out, none at all. So she was slipping. As soon as I heard the side of the truck slam into dirt I gunned it. Managed to power my way up and out, phew! The rest of the way out was fun but relatively uneventful by comparison. I have simply come to the conclusion that subconsciously I cannot stand having a clean truck.

This is just another tail to add to my list from Little Cedar. The very first time I was ever out there was with my dad and brother. I don't recall the date, but I suspect it was during Easter weekend. We were down visiting My Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. My mom and dad have always been big on outdoors and hiking, especially my dad. I'd wager to say we've hiked near 80% of the trails in Shawnee. Enough background though, my dad had taken my brother and I out to hike the Little Cedar Loop Trail. A small loop about 4mi long. Well it was a great hike, really a beautiful area. I had found myself a walking stick and we were at one of the creek crossings on the south tip of the lake. I decided to use my stick to help me cross on a log, taking a few steps then leaning on the stick. Well all was well till the creek suddenly got a lot deeper. I leaned on the stick and the stick kept looking for the bottom. Needless to say I got wet.

Well that pretty much raps up this weeks scouting report, though we've made some changes to the plan so that may require another trip. We will see...

Eh, it'll be about 5miles

Julie

<-- Billiken

We are always on the look out for poor sucker..... erm, friends that are willing to come hiking with us. This week Jenny and Julie came out with us. Julie is a friend that we met down here at school last year, and Jenny is a friend of Scott, Drew, and DanBo's from High School. She is currently going to school in St. Louis. Silly Billiken.

While our original plan was to hike about 5 miles er so, it just didn't pan out that way. Old fire roads that we considered parking a car on could not be found so we had to fall back on the plan to hike all the way to Bald Knob. While this hike should have only been about 7.5mi, well I already discussed how that ended up longer.

All and all they faired just as well as the rest of us, Julie may even be coming along this next weekend. Thought I'm not sure they'll trust me when I tell them the difficulty and length anymore.

Better knowing us...

Hi. How. Are. Ya.
This will be the first of several installments where you, will get to know us better. Also, get used to the Simpsons' quotes.

Lets start with our Indian spirit guide. Drew, I say spirit instead of trail guide because well... I don't think he has ever looked at the maps for longer than 5min. Of course if he is guiding us via the use of his grand Indian heritage I guess he wouldn't really need to. And for those who have not figured it out yet, I speak of the Native American kind of Indian. Not the kind ol' C Squared thought he found.

Drew is a mysterious being. Many hours he has spent wandering the land. Crossing towns by foot, at hours where it is only him to enjoy the starry silence. I suspect it is because of how he is in touch with the natural world around us that we keep running into strange animals at the ends of our journeys. Perhaps he has known their spirits were there the whole time, he has been following them as they showed us the way to our destination. And once they knew we were safe the rest of us saw them take a more earthly form. Be it of the armadillo of Winter's Pond or The Great White Dog of Bald Knob. Drew has let them guide us safely from trail head to trail head.

As I muse to myself about this, and out loud as it were, I tend to come to the realization that I was right to call him our Spirit Guide. It seems to be synonymous with Trail Guide. He does not need the maps as I do for the Spirits are helping him.

Some Photos

The Group

I'm the map, I'm the map.......

Want more photos? http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2203205&id=37608298&l=b42804e22

This not what I signed up for....

"What's the one where the girls wail on each other?"

"You mean foxy boxing?"

"Yes! Thats what I wanted."

Well as you might guess from that opening quote, we got a bit more than expected today on our hike. We started at an elevation of about 350ft and ended at about 800ft. And we experienced every foot in between. After the initial 1.7mi or so we finally got into the woods and off of roads. So that made for about 12mi till we got in the woods.

What made that first 2 miles especially rough though was the fact that we climbed about 400ft. I was aching by the time we reached the top, my lower back was killing me. But as it leveled out for a while I felt alright. We carried on through the woods with some minor hills on the way till we approached Hutching's Creek. That resulted in down hill to about 450ft. We crossed the creek a few times and hiked along the creek bed for a while. I paid close attention to the map GPS and became concerned. We were making our way too far north. I stopped the group and we back tracked a little bit then went off trail. Cut across the creek for a third and final time and blazed our way through some underbrush till we hit the BMT. The Bridge Man Trail, this is why I wish we had better maps, and some parts of the river to river trail need much better blazes. If I wish to put together a guide once we are done I should really go back and try to find the proper trail. Anyway, we hiked another grueling uphill... and another... and another... well you get the idea. It was rather brutal. We finally managed to get to DanBo's Cappy.

DanBo and I headed back to the minivan and then drove to pick everyone up. We couldn't manage to get everyone in one vehicle like last time. Just too uncomfortable to get 8 people into an old Cappy. So we went back to the trail head and picked everyone up. Got home showered, had dinner, and now we're relaxing. I figured I should get this down right quick and I can give you some photos and fun stories tomorrow.

Cheers

Recon

So currently I am jobless and only taking one course, this naturally results in too much free time. As a result I decided to to a little recon today. Our plan for next Saturday is to hike from winter's pond to a trail head in clear springs. My goal today was to locate that trail head. No luck, but I had a good time. My truck ended up muddy as hell which I love.

I did find the Goodwin trail head which is where we'd be hiking to the next saturday. I think what we'll end up doing is finding where the trail intersects Hutching's Creek Road and hoping we could park somewhere around there.

I'm the map!

Part 1

The first leg we hiked was from Devil's Backbone to Winter's Pond. GPS put the distance at about 9.6 miles. We managed the hike in just under 4 hours. Pretty good time really, had a break for lunch, delicious turkey sandwiches. Well some had ham as well. This part of the trail was all just walking along roads. Saw several trucks along the trail, joked that they were looking to run us out of town. Considered informing the folks of Grand Tower that the cold war was over, We Won!

Overall we the hike was not too eventful. About the only really cool site before the last 2 miles was tower rock. The last 2 miles were rather neat though. As we went down them the bluffs came more into view and we got to take in what we'll be hiking up this next Saturday. We also saw an armadillo... which is just weird and awesome.

Danbo was along for the hike this time around and I'm told that he considering going the whole way with us. Once we got to Winter's Pond we piled into my truck, 4 in the cab with Drew and Danbo riding in the bed. I'm told it was a cold ride back to the van by them. Not sure what they were talking about though, I was nice and warm.

The Crew

Classic Drew

And the Armadillo

Introduction

Well I'd wager it is always best to start with an intro. I'm not much of a writer but I feel that the task we are about to embark on should have some sort of log to it. Myself (Mike) and a group of friends plan on hiking the river to river trail in Southern Illinois. We wont be doing it all at once, school and such you know.

The Group:

Mike (me)

Scott (my brother)

Luke (friend, Kasia's boyfriend)

Kasia (friend, pronounced Ka-sha, Luke's girlfriend)

Drew (friend)

Those are the five that plan on doing every bit of the trail, there will be others that pop in time to time for various sections.