Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Pt. 3

After watching the clouds roll in, I climbed into my tent. Within an hour, it was thunderstorming pretty bad. I became acclimated to most sounds, like my rattling tent and the sound of groundwater flowing under my tent's footprint. However, every 30 minutes or so, a crack of thunder would shock me awake.


Cloud cover.

Despite the overnight drama, I woke up at around 5:30 in the morning the next day. I didn't realize how hard the rain was falling until I saw my tent and boots, which were under the tent's vestibule, covered with mud that had been knocked into the air. I had stored my food in a waterproof stuff sack, and used my backpack cover (I store my backpack up in the air too, since I assume it smells like food too), so that was all relatively dry.


The trail is marked with either a piece of blue metal hammered into a tree as shown here, or simply a small blue dot spray painted on the tree.

The morning was almost sunny, but I was sure it wouldn't last. I checked out the Little Carp Trail, which moved back inland, as a day hike. About four miles into it, I heard thunder moving in and backtracked to my campsite. Although the Little Carp looked like the best trail in the park, I decided to hug the coastline to keep an eye on the weather. It turned out to be a nice hike and a pair of ospreys followed my route, randomly flying out from their hidden perches, trying to nab fish from the lake. Also, because I was able to watch the weather, I found a campsite and finished setting up literally minutes before a torrential downpour hit. I crawled into my tent, and felt lucky and unlucky at the same time.


A Cedar Waxwing, right at the beginning of my hike. A common bird around here.


Some type of wren on the Little Carp Trail? Uh, I'm not sure what kind, and I'm not even certain it's a wren. I'm not very good with birds.