“What about our Isle Royale trip? That was our longest hike. We walked forty-three miles from one end of the island to the other. Started out at Rockport on the eastern tip and hiked the Greenstone Ridge down the middle of the island for the entire length down to Windigo, a little settlement at the western tip of the island.”
“The whole island is like a washboard with ridges running most of the length of the island. The main ridge is the Greenstone. It’s an up and down affair with switchbacks taking you to the higher points that are about seven-hundred feet above the lake, but it’s enough to wear you out in a day of hiking, especially when you’re carrying a forty pound pack .”
“Hey, remember when we ran into those two young guys carrying gigantic backpacks?” asked Kellan. Jack laughed at the vision the two had presented. The two young men’s eyes had been glazed over as Jack and Kellan stopped and talked to them. Perspiration ran from every sweat gland in their bodies, drenching them as if they had been swimming. They didn’t say a word or appear to comprehend anything said to them. Exhaustion seeped from every pore of their bodies.
Five minutes after everyone had moved on, young men to the east, Jack and Kellan to the west, two, attractive twenty year olds in bikinis pranced on the trail toward the brothers, picking flowers and marveling at all the beauty of the forest. They were not carrying packs and appeared to have nary a care in the world. They were uninhibited, bubbly, and as unaware of their boyfriends’ agony as anyone could be as they spoke to the brothers.
As Kellan and Jack admired the young women skipping away from them, they laughed quietly, thinking that the young men would not be in any shape for extracurricular activities that evening.
“We took our time on the first three days, never traveling more than five or six miles. We’d hike off the main trail down to a lake and make camp for the evening and then move on the next morning. The last day we hiked twenty miles to Windigo where we pretty much collapsed in exhaustion. Lucky for us that some of the men that worked on the island had been fishing for lake trout and offered us some back at their cabins. It seemed like the grilled trout was the sweetest tasting meal we had ever had.” Kellan gazed wistfully up at the stars when he had finished talking. It was clear, that trip had been one of his fondest.
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