Another diversion: I’m digging out old stories of hiking and travel and populating another site of mine, Friend | Travels. I just posted a lengthy piece on HIKING CORFU: Greece’s Verdant Isle, a place I truly miss.
Along the East Chickenbone Trail: A well-built bridge headed uphill towards the escarpment. See the millions of mosquitoes? Probably not. I took this photo from inside my mosquito netting.
“Ow-woo-oo, ow-woo-oo” A wolf’s howl echoes across the clear water of McCargo Cove as I rise at dawn, looking across this finger of Lake Superior from the cozy comfort of my camping shelter. When I arrived by water taxi the day before, I had time to explore an abandoned 1800s copper mine before cooking dinner and watching beavers swim across the placid waters. As the sun began to fade, a moose strode into the shallows, browsing aquatic plants. Loons set up a cacophonous symphony. If it weren’t for the mosquitoes, rivaling quantities seen on a summer’s day in the Everglades, I might have stayed up later for the parade of wildlife. But I was glad for shelter away from their buzz.
My backpacking trip was the first solo I’d done in nearly a decade, and it only took a few hours to remember why I haven’t soloed since. I missed the company. Sure, there were other hikers at the campground, but we didn’t connect over dinner, didn’;t share much time. The moose was the only moment to bring us together. Cooking dinner from behind my bug net, I envied my fellow writers back at the lodge.
Ninety-five percent of visitors to Isle Royale National Park are backpackers in search of solitude, and given less people visit this 45-mile-long island in Lake Superior each season than go to Yellowstone in a day, they find it. Most folks head straight for a primitive campground such as Moskey Basin or Daisy Farm and stake a claim on a shelter for a night or two: the view is worth so much more than the $4 per day park use fee, and you can day hike a loop or two out of most of the campsites.
Words can’t do it justice. It takes a slide show to showcase what wilderness hiking on this arboreal island is all about. I saw several species of orchids, especially the yellow lady slippers, nodding beneath the ferns. Birchs stood sentinel above the well-trodden track. Mosses and lichens covered the rocks and tree trunks. I heard several moose, and saw two. Dropping down off the escarpment, I walked while lulled by the gentle lap of Lake Superior against basalt.
Had I not gone solo, perhaps I would have played another day. But cold rain soaked me to the skin as I clambered across slick basalt boulders, and I fell and hurt my knee. Alone, it was frightening. I pressed on, reaching each campsite and making a decision to keep hiking, remembering the key buried in my pack. I had a carrot at trail’s end: a room at the Rock Harbor Lodge. Tucked away in a cove along the southeastern shore, Rock Harbor is the island’s hub. Here, ferryboats dock, tour boats depart, kayakers launch, camping supplies are sold, and hot meals served. After 15 miles crossing slick rocks and rugged (for this Florida hiker) terrain, half of it in the rain, I was thankful for the steak dinner and hot bath at trail’s end.
A diversion: a writer’s conference on Mackinac Island, my first SATW regional conference, and with free time available here and there during the week, I set my sights on exploring the island - by foot. 
Tranquil Bluff Trail
Established in 1895, Mackinac Island State Park covers more than 80% of the island, which means shady arboreal forests where wildflowers carpet the forest floor.
Being a geology buff, I got Bob Tagatz, the Grand Hotel’s fount of information, to connect the dots on a map for me. Since cars are banned on the island, the only modes of transportation are bicycle, horse (and horse-drawn), and your own two feet. Okay, I saw a kid on a scooter, too, but skates and skateboards are banned too. So it’s a great place to walk. My journey took me past the Governor’s Summer House and Fort Mackinac to the South Bicycle Trail, a paved path open to folks on foot; a trodden track adjoins. The mixed forest of spruce, pine, and hardwoods hosted bouquets of yellow lady’s slipper in bloom, a delight for the eyes; lily of the valley grew in clusters, reminding me of a ribbon-wrapped bouquet from a sweetheart nearly 30 years ago. I don’t have a flora id book with me (yet), but it’s spring here, folks, and everything’s in bloom.
Arch Rock was the first stop on the geology tour, the natural bridge framing a view of crystalline Lake Huron and the Canadian shoreline in the distance. I continued along the Tranquil Bluff Trail, and it was indeed - a steep drop to the shoreline, the footpath steep enough in places I pondered sliding down it. The lip of the bluff dissuaded me. I enjoyed my lunch at an overlook, and backtracked to find a trail to the next stop, the Hay Stack. 
No luck, I missed the natural footpath, so I followed the roads until I found another footpath. This one showed much use by horses (in the form of road-apples), and giant trillium sported faded blooms. The Hay Stack, a large breccia column, is a nexus: in its shadow, hikers, bicyclists, folks on horseback, and horse-drawn carriages met. But only hikers could ascend the 140 steps up a breccia cliff to Point Lookout, a most excellent view. I continued along the ridge to walk around Fort Holmes for more panoramas, and took Henry’s Trail (a steep one) down to Skull Cave, where fifth graders on bicycles were giggling. No footpaths headed west, so it was back to the road for a walk past all of the cemeteries, Turtle Park, and the Airport to find the path to The Crack in the Island. Mind you, I was warned it wasn’t as spectacular as it sounded. But it was still very fascinating. This narrow cleft in the bedrock of the island is too narrow to walk through, but you can still get down in it and stare down it and wonder where the rattlesnakes are, since it looks like a perfect snake den area. Nearby, the Cave of the Woods was a small limestone formation big enough to sleep inside.
My time was running short, so I looked for a way to walk a footpath back to the Grand Hotel and found the shady Allouez Trail. Two groups of folks on horseback passed by. The trail crosses ones with names like Trillium and Indian Pipe, and you’ll find them all here on the lush forest floor. Popping out into a residental area with gingerbread Victorian homes tucked under the pines, I found my way back down the bluff to the hotel. Total travel time, 3.5 hours. And well worth the walk. Yes, you could bicycle most of the journey, but it just wouldn’t be the same
Bald Rock, Cheaha State Park
…you can see forever. Or so it seemed from the top of Cheaha Mountain, Alabama’s highest point at over 2700 feet. Yes, folks, we’re not in Florida here: a side trail, if you will, a diversion for a good cause: a weekend spent with the Alabama Hiking Trail Society at their Annual Conference at Bald Rock Lodge, Cheaha State Park in north-central Alabama. These folks are doing their best to provide the citizens of Alabama with a network of hiking footpaths, and in doing so to connect the Florida Trail with the Appalachian Trail. The Pinhoti Trail, blazed with turkey tracks, passes through the park, so we had an opportunity on a guided outing to plunge down the side of the mountain from Bald Rock to Blue Mountain Shelter. I’m glad I brought my hiking stick. With no leaves on the trees, the views are incredible.
From the lodge, a broad boardwalk makes the view from the top accessible to all ages and abilities; as we plunged down the rugged Bald Point Trail, my knees felt the elevation loss and my brain kept saying ‘what goes down, must come up!’ Tiny white wildflowers and bluets peered from beneath the cover of oak, hickory, and beech leaves on the forest floor; a spring trickled across the trail. We reached the Pinhoti Trail after a half mile of sheer downhill, and continued downhill to a streambed to the access trail to the shelter. It’s much like an Appalachian Trail shelter, with a cooking shelf and two tiers of sleeping-plush stuff for backpackers! While I’m tempted to try the Pinhoti sometime, I couldn’t help but think of how varied the vegetation (not the elevation) would be in Florida on the same length of hike. I think I’ve gotten spoiled.
The Conference was well-attended and provided some excellent workshops, including a don’t-miss discussion of Alabama wildflowers by Carolyn Dean and the recounting of a PCT thru-hike by our own 500-miler Dan Bedore, who plans to finish off the Florida Trail in bits and pieces. The AHTS crowd is a solid group of hard-core trail builders and maintainers who are building on their dream; after five years, I’m pleased to see how well they are doing as an organization. Keep it up, guys!
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