NW/WWF-Day 15-The Porkies!

I must say, I actually slept pretty okay last night. My tent was sloping down and sideways, but I put my Thermarest Z-seat under the downslope side, and that helped a lot. 

We were back on the road about 8:15. We had a smallish climb right away, which was good because it was a little chillier this morning. The sleeves stayed on my jacket because then it was downhill nearly all the way to the lake (yep, that lake…Superior). 

We rode along the lake to Silver City (ironic, don’t you think, considering this was all copper country). According to the route, there was nothing in Silver City. But, we came across the Porkies Outpost. 

Big ol’ bear out front. 

I got a chocolate milk and a chocolate thing called a fudge pastie (it was like a turnover shaped chocolate truffle). Both were delicious! There was also this sign there. 

Sooo…the Porcupine Mtns are beyond the end of the earth?

Just down the road we came to the entrance of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. 

Didn’t want to block the sign. 

We rode on to the Visitor’s Center. There we found out all the campgrounds were completely full. It was early anyway, and the road is paved all the way through the park. This is one of those days where we had mostly pavement. Had it been necessary, I would have asked to share someone’s site in one of the campgrounds. As it was, the climbing wasn’t bad, and we made it through the entire park by about 2:30 (46 miles total from the start of the day).

Nice paved road through the park. I was looking for a bear (supposedly there are about 200 bears in the Porkies). 

 Then, when I went to take a photo of the river, I noticed we have gone back to Central Time, so we gained an hour. 

Presque Isle River. 

Since we couldn’t stay in the park, we filtered water for the night and morning. 

As we were starting out again, it started to rain. It was just enough to pull out rain jackets (I just put the sleeves on my vest). Of course, just a couple of miles down the road it stopped. I let the sleeves dry a bit, then took them off. We were starting a climb, and knew I’d be sweating. 

Partially up the climb, there was a sign for the North Country Trail in a swath of the Ottawa National Forest. There was a wide old road with a closed gate. I thought it looked like a great spot to camp. It was a little early, but we had come 49 miles, and even though we gained an hour, our bodies were still on Eastern Time. I think Lani would have liked to go further, but this was such a nice campsite. 

Moss and everything! A little early arrival allows for sweaty clothes to dry a bit. 


That’s about it for today. Tomorrow we have to decide if we stay on the route along an “overgrown ATV trail”, or do a bypass through Wakefield. We’ll have a look, and make our decision then.