Cheap Thrills Summer

CHEAP THRILLS IN THE SUMMERTIME

ROUGHING IT IN MICHIGAN

If you're looking for something new and interesting to get into this summer, why not try hiking or backpacking? It can be a most economical and healthy way to spend an afternoon, a couple of days, or even weeks. Besides, getting away from the city and out into the bush can be great for your head in many ways, providing you're prepared.

HIKING

No special equipment is necessary for hiking in Michigan, and very little for backpacking, with the exception of footwear. Good boots and socks are essential tools to shod your feet so that they aren't hot, sore, and blistered two hours into a six-hour sojourn. A well broken-in pair of high-top boots with a Vibram or similar traction sole are essential if you're planning on any extensive hiking, though a pair of sneakers will do in a pinch. Good boots should run from $20-$30. 

From around the house you'll need to have a hat to protect against sunstroke, and to prevent dehydration, a canteen for water plus salt tablets, or better yet, fresh fruit or fruit juices. A first-aid kit for cuts, sunburn, poison ivy, and the like is invaluable. Long pants and long sleeves protect against sun, insects, and underbrush and can always be rolled up, or bring along a change of clothing for lolling around camp. Bandanas are nice to wear around the neck and as headbands. Anything you can think of is fair game. Use your imagination. But remember, you're going to have to be carrying all this stuff around, so make your load reasonable.

One of the nicer near-by places to get out and grok nature is the Botanical Gardens, a mile or so north of Geddes Rd. on Dixboro Rd. The Botanical Gardens, abutting the huge Matthai estate, has a number of trails for hiking, and greenhouses containing tropical and desert plants.

Another nice place to check out is Kensington Park, near Milford. A 4300-acre Metropolitan park just off I-96, it offers several well-marked hiking trails of various distances. Packed on the weekends, the trails are quite enjoyable during the first part of the week. Kensington is part of the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority which also has smaller parks near Ann Arbor. These are Delhi and Dexter-Huron, five and seven miles northwest of Ann Arbor along Huron River Dr. These parks have not been fully developed yet and remain of the picnic variety, sans trails, which makes the outlying park edges that less trashed and that more inviting to explore. And if you haven't been all over the Arb by now, what are you waiting for?

BACKPACKING

If you find yourself giving vent more and more to that ol' primate exploratory urge, soon you're going to need to carry home base right along with you. That's backpacking. Backpacking means making your pack,self-sustaining; tent/tarp, sleeping bag, food, clothing, gear, and all this as light as possible as you may well have it on your back 8-10 hours a day.

FOOD

For short morning or afternoon trips, food is optional. A light snack of some simple energy foods like raisins, nuts. granola, health food energy-bars, or fruit is great for a rest stop.

On a full-day hike the only meal is lunch, usually consumed in several installments. It's a good idea to take along a little extra as appetites respond pretty fiercely to the fresh air. Take what you fancy, but avoid food that may spoil if it is warm, like meat or mayonnaise. Personally, I find that bread, wine, cheese, soup and fruit make a mouth-watering combination.

For trips of several days its a good idea to emphasize dry food or dehydrated foods that can be reconstituted. This reduces the weight of the food you're packing, which is 98% water to begin with. You can outfit with crackers, dry soups, cereals, beans, and other light supermarket stuff. Don't forget some dried fruit to ease the constipation you'll encounter. If you've got the bucks, you can get through the camping stores, at ripoff prices, complete freeze-dried meals that weigh practically nothing. They taste fairly good but are packed with chemical preservatives, mainly anti-oxidants. The specialties, such as the cheesecake, are delicious, but stay away from the main courses which you can pre-package yourself at a fraction the cost.

A canteen is good to have along for drinking, as well as first aid and cooking. Unfortunately, almost all the water in Michigan is not fit to drink unless its from a faucet, which means that the backpacker must give thought to water purification. The two most widely used methods are boiling or the use of halizone tablets. Halizone tablets do not actually sterilize water but kill most of the agents that may cause disease, so that to be safe one should boil water for a few minutes before drinking or cooking.

CLOTHING

Pack clothing as light as possible: a change or two of long pants and long-sleeved shirts, an old sweater, weather-proof jacket and/or poncho, a towel, plenty of socks are the essentials. A hat is great to keep the sun and rain off your head, and you can find any number of uses for a bandana. Leather work gloves are nice for gathering fire wood, and working around the fire. Sunglasses are optional, and of course hiking boots are a must.

SHELTER

Shelter can be had efficiently and cheaply by pitching a large tarp/plastic as an open tent, or you can spring for a good lightweight nylon number. The store bought tent will spare you battling the bugs, which you have to deal with if you pitch the open tent. In that case you can get surplus mosquito netting on the roll, usually available at the REAL Army-Navy Surplus stores, to forge an insect defense. Affix it to the edges of the tarp so that it hangs down or whatever. It's your hide, use your imagination.

If you haven't got a down bag to sleep in, you can get by quite adequately with two or three wool blankets, depending on the warmth of the blanket and the night temperature, which drops into the 50's in Northern Michigan and can reach the 40's with rain. You've also got to insulate your body from the ground or it'll suck out your body heat. A simple way to do this is with an air mattress, or you could use a space blanket. Whatever the case, you'll need a groundsheet beneath the insulation to keep surface water from getting you wet when it rains.

COOKING

Cooking means you have to deal with gear and a fire. The cooking gear can be as simple as this: a grill, two or three inter-fitting aluminum pots with lids, one or two frying pans, some plates that fit within the pots, cups, and cooking utensils. Add to the collection as you please.

The fire should not be laid until the site is prepared by clearing it down to rock or mineral soil. The area over the fire should be clear with no overhanging branches. When gathering wood, take only dead wood, the dead lower branches of living trees, or wood already down. Green wood burns poorly if at all, so it is to no avail to cut down any living trees. If you get caught in the rain, remember that standing dead wood will always burn.

For a good evenly burning fire you can cook on, lay out two base logs parallel and the kindling between in a small heap growing into a teepee with the larger pieces. Lay out the rest of the fire as in a log cabin, building up layers in rack-like manner, then position the grill over it. This fire burns down in an even manner, and can be stoked in the same pat- tern it was laid. Secure your wood supply against rain by covering it with a small ground cloth. Make sure your fire is dead out before you leave camp. When you break camp, cover all evidence of the fire and your camp. It's hip to leave the place cleaner than when you found it, and no trace that you were there.

SANITATION

What goes in one end comes out the other, and dealing with this fact of life in the woods is simple and straight-forward. Where there are no facilities you are left with the old primate squat and shit, into a hole kicked in the ground so it can be covered. Wiping with leaves is cool, in fact there's a broadleaf plant known as the lumberman's toilet paper, but please make sure you know which plants are which. If you pack out a bunwad with you, don't bury the paper, rather burn it in the campfire. It takes 5-7 years for toilet paper to degrade and return to the soil whereas burning converts it to ash immediately.

PACKS

Now to carry all this stuff around you need a pack, which is most likely going to cost you money. If you're really ingenious you can make your own. Basically there are three kinds: bag with external frame, bag with internal frame, and bag, plain without frame. The pack with the external frame is the most efficient as it places much of the load on the hips quite close to the center of gravity. This type of pack allows you to carry 45-55 Ib. of gear quite comfortably. The best ones start at about $55, though you can get a cut-rate model for $30-$35. The pack with internal frame is not as efficient as the pack with external frame, and consequently requires more effort to carry the same load. Usually large in volume, they are best suited for short trips and moderate loads. They're great for hitchhiking too as there's no external frame to make a bulky object. The bag pack comes in several styles and sizes, and is mostly used as a day pack for short hikes. This is the best type of pack to have if you are doing any extended canoe tripping with several portages. The basic thing to keep in mind is to fit the pack to the task.

MISCELLANEOUS

Odds and ends you'll need to have on hand are waterproof matches, a jackknife, needle and thread, whetstone, and a hatchet/axe. A blues harp or two is always nice to have along, and a pack of cards may keep you sane some rainy day. A compass is a must if want to wander off the trails, and you're bound sometime to need a first-aid kit for sunburn, cuts, and the like. Pictures make great memories, so take your camera along. And, oh yeah, don't forget your stash.

WHERE TO GO  

You can check out some trails nearby specifically for backpacking in the Waterloo Recreation Area out by Dexter-Pinckney, namely the ten mile Hickory Ridge trail and the Pawtomanie trail. These trails link through a series of small lakes where there are campsites and drinking water. You can check out more information with the Waterloo Recreation Area at 475-8307.

In addition, there are many State and National Forest campgrounds, more primitive and less crowded than the State Park campgrounds. Scattered throughout the State and National Forests, they are usually free but smaller than the State Parks which require a sticker plus camping fee. Good sources of information about campsites are camping stores, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and the U. S. Forest Service. The best source is the people you meet camping.

For just camping out, the Warren Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan is a great time. Or if you're really into backpacking, check out Porcupine Mountains State Park in the western U.P. This park contains the beautiful Lake of the Clouds, large tracts of untouched forest wilderness abundant with game, and several miles of rugged Lake Superior shore. A system of foot trails is well marked throughout the area for hiking trips of one day to a week, with camping at trail-side shelters.

The shore-to-shore trail, for both hikers and horse-backers, crosses the entire lower peninsula from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The eastern end is at Tawas City while the western end forks to finish at two small towns, Elberta and Empire. The distance is roughly 350 miles, counting side trails.

The terrain is mainly flat and sandy, forested with a mixture of evergreens and young hardwood. Streams and rivers are plentiful, and are long stretch passes through the Huron National Forest, home of the rare, elusive Kirtland's Warbler.

Whatever your level of expertise, you'll find the outdoors to be friendly as long as you remain considerate. Accidents usually happen because someone oversteps their bounds - too much sun, alcohol, and general lack of foresight cause people to blindly fall into many a minor-to-major medical discomforture. Lay back, relax, and have a good time. It feels so good to let the tensions drain away. But watch out. You may find it addictive! --Tom Kuzma & Michael Cheeseman