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Isle Royale end-to-end solo loop hike part 7
This is the 7th post on my end-to-end solo hike on Isle Royale. I am the only person in the campground at Little Todd Harbor when big thunderstorm rolls in.
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Little Todd Harbor Campground
Little Todd Harbor has no shelters, only tent sites. This would be my first night in a tent on this trip, as I’d stayed in the Isle Royale shelters every other night. I chose site #1 because it was closest to where I came in, and closest to the latrine.
There was a fire pit and some logs you could sit on. I saw a canoe stashed back in the bushes, but no other signs of people, and wondered if the Park Service kept it there.
I set up my tent. It was HOT! There wasn’t much shade in the campsite. I was gathering what I needed to get water from Lake Superior (which was very close to the campsites) when a man walked into my campsite, startling me.
A Park Service employee, he had come for the canoe that was in the bushes. He was going to canoe out into Lake Superior, where a Park Service boat was coming to get him. The man seemed to be in a hurry, and explained who he was as he lifted up the boat to carry it down to the water. He paddled out, and the boat arrived. That was the only other person I saw all day, and it was a very brief encounter.
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Get the Isle Royale guidebookAs I collected water from Lake Superior, I watched the small islands in the distance, part of Canada. They were shrouded in flog and mist, looking very mysterious.
The beach at Little Todd Harbor campground
The beach area at the campground is very rocky, but the rocks are amazing. They are smooth, with beautiful patterns and colors. I wandered around the beach for a while, admiring the rocks and taking some photos.
Back at the campsite, there were a stupid amount of flies. They were flying around me all the time, and biting my ankles. I tried to hide out in the tent, but it was pretty much a sauna – too hot to stay in it for more than a minute or two. My chocolate all turned to liquid, which was a catastrophe. (Fine, I’m exaggerating, but I wasn’t thrilled.) I went back to the beach to cool off in the Lake Superior water for a while, before making dinner.
A storm is coming
While preparing dinner, the temperature plummeted at least 10 degrees. The wind picked up, and all the flies disappeared. A storm was coming.
I walked down to the water to get a good look at the sky. There was a giant, dark cloud moving across from the islands I had looked at earlier. It was quite a sight, watching it roll in across Lake Superior. This looked like it could be a serious storm and it was happening on my first night in a tent instead of a shelter.
Accidental soup – rehydrating backpacking meals
I moved my dinner preparations into my tent vestibule, and packed up anything I didn’t want to get wet. My dinner was a bit of a disaster as I’d put too much water in it. It was supposed to be chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, mixed vegetables, and Stove Top stuffing. The mashed potatoes were too thick, so I added more water, making them runny. The gravy was brown water.
The stuffing was amazing. Everything else had too much water so I mixed together and ate it as soup. I wasn’t going to starve, but it wasn’t my favorite meal on the island!
I heard thunder in the distance and was eating my dinner in my tent when the rain began. It quickly turned into a downpour.
The rain tests my backpacking tent
I organized my tent, trying to protect anything that shouldn’t get wet, just in case. I had bought my tent just for this trip. It was a very lightweight Nemo 2 person tent with two doors. I love it for the weight and for having the extra door. It’s not very roomy, though, and one end of the rain fly is shorter than it seems it should be. You have to be very careful when staking it down to make sure it’s taut enough that it stands out from the side of the tent.
For size and stability I prefer my Kelty Salida tent, but I needed the lightweight option for this trip.
So I sat in my small tent, with the rain pounding down. It rained pretty heavily for what was probably a couple of hours. Eventually it let up so the noise of the rain was a little less deafening, but the thunder and lightning continued for a while longer.
There was some dampness at one end of my tent, but no pools of water at least.
Sunset after the storm at Little Todd Harbor
When the rain stopped, I braved the wet path down to the water. The sun was setting and the sky was brilliant gold. After I enjoyed the sunset, I returned to my tent to go to sleep.
As I lay in my tent, I rolled over and noticed my tent wall was glowing orange. I unzipped the door to see the sky aflame in beautiful post-sunset colors, like a campfire in the sky.
Next: Isle Royale part 8: On the Minong Ridge from Little Todd Harbor
Missed the beginning of the series? Read Isle Royale part 1: Planning & Training.
