Don't Buy Firewood! Camp Kitchen Set-up and a Hike to rhe Beach
Click on picture to see DTube video.
Posted July 13, 2018
Monday July 9, 2018
Day 1646
Miles. 80,332
This video finally uploaded on my fourth attempt of trying only once each day, because each attempt took over an hour. Sorry about the bad lighting on some spots. I'm still learning about not shooting toward the sun. I'll promise to keep improving the quality of both my videos and my monologues. Thanks for upvoting and following.
All 17 dispersed campsites on Green Road were occupied during the July 4th holiday week. Typically weekends are the busiest and almost everyone, except for us nomads, will leave on Sunday. Most campers will have brought or bought wood for campfires, so it's easy to scrounge both partially burned and unused firewood late Sunday and Monday, that was left behind. I found enough to last me a week with very little work and time, that would have easily cost me $30 or more. Part of the reason I van nomad is to save money and I also take delight in providing my needs by getting them for free if possible.
The trail I spoke of in the video starts near me on Green Road. It is marked with a small map attached to a post at the trailhead and it is not easy to spot driving by. The way I found it was when I walked the entire length of Green Road while scouting the area. The trail was not indicated on the trail market meaning that it was little used. The trail was easy to follow for about a half mile in to the Nordhouse Dunes Wolderness Area and then disappeared when it led to a boggy, swampy area of the forest. I tried to bushwack my way around it with no luck, so I was backtracked to the start.
I decided to drive to the Nordhouse Dunes parking area where there are three trailheads to choose from. I'd already hiked the main trail that leads to a beautiful sandy beach along the shores of Lake Michigan. I decided to take the same trail, but this time take a trail that branched from it to the south. This trail is difficult to follow because it disappears in the forest where there is no vegetation and only dead leaves and pine needles covering the forest floor, when it starts going west instead of south. It was easy to walk anywhere and make my way to an expansive area of giant dunes. Some were covered with grass and flowers, while some were mostly just naked sand.
I had a difficult walk from where the first dune starts and the forest ends to reach the summit. Here I could see Lake Michigan maybe a half to three quarters of a mile away.
Walking on sand dunes requires about twice as much energy as walking on normal terrain, so it was a very difficult hike in the hot sun, without tree cover, until I reached the beach. The beach was bordered by 5 to 10 foot high sandy bluff with a shear vertical drop to the beach that was between 5 and 10 feet in width.
I slid down a low point in the bluff, changed to my shorts and took off my shoes. The water was fairly calm with only about one foot high breakers lapping on the beach. The water was cool, not cold and seemed a perfect temperature for swimming. There was no one around but on other person about a half mile north, walking north along the beach. They finally disappeared from my sight and I was in solitude. Another three quarters of a mile north and I met the trail east back to the parking area for a total hiking distance of 5 miles.
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