Backpacking gets you out there, it's quiet, it's peaceful, it's relaxing, and it's silent, except for the sounds of nature.
June 6, 2013
This year on our way to the island we ended up on the same boat as the park ranger, who introduced herself and asked us the questions we would usually be asked once arriving at the ranger station on the island.
Riding the boat with the park ranger also meant we got to hear some funny stories about other campers who had been out to the island recently. We heard stories about people who didn't realize you had to backpack in 4 miles during the off-season, and had brought all kinds of stuff with them. We heard stories about campers who got into huge yelling matches at their shelters, it was terribly amusing hearing the stories.
After we got off the boat we had our 4 mile hike ahead of us. A quick bathroom break at the ranger station, along with some sunscreen and bug spray application and we were on our way down the familiar Duck Harbor Trail.
About 3/4 of the way down the Duck Harbor Trail there is a little spur trail out to Deep Cove. We'd never really had the right opportunity to hike that little spur trail, but this time we did. We dropped our heavy packs a little ways down the spur trail, just before the trail got steeper, and hiked down to see Deep Cove for the first time.
We ended up staying in site 1. It's probably the second most private site in the campground. It's much closer to an outhouse than site 5, but it lacked a trail that let right out to what pretty much ended up being your own private beach. That was the only downside. Site 1 has a good view of Eben's head, and also had better drainage than site 5 did, which ended up being a blessing as our stay was pretty rainy.
Around 1pm we had set up camp and were ready to head out on a short hike up and over Duck Harbor Mountain.
June 7, 2013
Sidetrack had collected lots of dry firewood and kindling in the morning before we set out on our hike, in case of rain. So after dinner we built a fire and kept warm until it started to rain too much to be out from under the shelter.
We ended up retiring early and playing cards in the tent for awhile. The plan was to stay in camp the next day since it was supposed to rain heavily. We made the mistake of hiking in the rain last year, and it's still just a little too chilly for that here this time of year. Better to stay dry.
June 8, 2013
Adorable, and very bold, squirrel. (Photo by Ahren Niles) To our surprise, and delight, the rain stopped around noon. We were glad because we were getting low on water. Funny, right? It's raining and we're out of water. Anyway, we really needed water to cook dinner later so we gathered up our stuff and set out towards the water source. As we walked down the trail we noticed just how wet everything was, puddles everywhere, really marshy and muddy. Then we came to the stream that had been a trickle just the day before and holy crap, it was swollen and totally impassable! We kind of laughed and decided we would just gather the stream water. We had our Sawyer Squeeze filter with us so we loaded up the bags and headed back to camp with our prize...brown water. The brown was tannins, won't hurt ya, just doesn't taste amazing.
Since it still wasn't raining Sidetrack went down to the dock. We had hiked the 4 miles in, but we were supposed to catch the Duck Harbor boat right down at the campground entrance the next day to leave. The float hadn't been put in yet though, and we were starting to wonder if it was going to be. No float = no boat.
On the way back to camp Sidetrack stopped to talk to some other campers that had come in the evening before. The other camper said the rangers had made an attempt to put the float in while we were out hiking the day before, but they had been unsuccessful as the water was too rough.
Sidetrack also discovered all the trails leading out of camp were badly flooded. We would be staying in camp the rest of the night. We found a music station on our little weather radio and played more cards.
As we packed up that night, after another nice fire, we discussed plans for the next day. Our plans to lounge around until the boat arrived may not pan out. We decided we would get up early and if the float wasn't in by 8am we would just hike the 4 miles back to town.
June 9, 2013
About an hour down the road we ran into two rangers headed to put the dock in. They offered us a ride back to Duck Harbor if we wanted it. We thought for a minute and decided to just decline the ride and keeping walking. We would take the town boat out. The rangers said if they saw us on their way back to town they'd stop and give us a ride the rest of the way.
A ride would have been nice, but we never saw the rangers before we got back to where we planned to switch from walking on the road to walking on the trail again. We decided rather than hiking the trail back to the ranger station we would take the Black Dinah trail where it split and hike over to Black Dinah's for breakfast.
The black Dinah Trail, unfortunately, had some really big tree's down over it and it was really muddy. That decision ended up not being the best we'd ever made, but we got to Black Dinah's eventually. At Black Dinah's we met Joey, the white cat...a.k.a "Joey, the hedonistic attention whore" (so titled by a friendly local). Black Dinah's is a small shop with a few tables, lots of amazing looking chocolates and a really fancy breakfast menu." It felt too nice inside for us, a couple filthy hikers that hadn't had a shower in 4 days. We asked for 2 iced coffee's and a couple donuts to go. The coffee was so good and the donut was amazing! I stopped to give Joey a scritch and belly rub before heading down the road towards the dock. Still no sign of the rangers when we passed the ranger station.
When we got back the boat was just arriving and it was time to say goodbye to Isle au Haut for another year. "Parting is such sweet sorrow." :)