23.5 miles of hiking • 0' elevation gain • 2 nights
I left my house around 1pm and drove through some beautiful farmland on my way to the trailhead. I arrived at the North Country Trail trailhead in Solon Springs, WI about two hours later. After about a mile of walking I realized that I had probably taken the wrong trail, so I called CryotheWild from the forums. After talking with him I decided that I indeed had taken the wrong trail, so I hiked back and found the right trail! Once I got on the right trail it was another short mile walk in to the area where everyone else was camping. We were allowed to camp off the trail a bit because Snipen got us all a dispersed camping permit. It was a hot and muggy evening, but we still had a small fire. I decided to turn in for the night around 11:30pm and when I got in and laid down in my hammock I looked up to see some HUGE spiders that had crawled inside my bug net (that I forgot to close!) After freaking out a bit and getting rid of the spiders I dosed off... woke up around 2am to answer the call of nature and saw Hilo and his girlfriend arrive.
The next morning we were all up pretty early and hit the trail around 7:30am and it was already starting to get hot! MT from the forums was out first, then it was Cryothewild and his buddy, Drew. I followed a bit after them. after about 30 minutes of hiking alone I caught up with Cryothewild and Drew and a few minutes we all caught up with MT. We spent the rest of the day hiking together. It was a fun group of guys to hike with! The plan was to meet up with everyone at the Highland Town Hall which was just before where we were planning to camp on day 2. So we all broke out our hammocks and enjoyed the breeze for about an hour before everyone else showed up. We all ate some lunch and got some water before heading to the campsite.
Day three was just as hot as the previous two days and we got a later start. This day's hike was to be about 6.5 miles or so, but in the heat it felt much longer! It didn't help that this section was dry and I ran out of water about half way through. One thing that I haven't mentioned yet is how bad the ticks were on the trail... it was a nonstop battle to keep them off yourself! I think it is safe to say that most of us had somewhere around 100-150 ticks each during this trip.
