Shawn and I were able to hike the Tecumseh Trail while we were home in Indiana. We dropped the kids off with Granny and then headed out. We stepped off on the trail around 2:30 on Monday, August 10th, at the Crooked Creek Parking Area.
We saw and heard lots of deer on day one.
We got to our first camping spot which was at the north end of Yellowood Lake. According to the map, we did 11.6 miles on our first day.
When we first got there, we sat down for a minute to see where we wanted to set up camp. When I took down my socks, we realized I had probably 100 baby ticks (which we later found out are called Turkey Ticks/Mites) on my ankles. I immediately started freaking out and we realized our 99.9% effective tick remover tool was not going to work on these tiny ticks. So, Shawn sprayed them down with bug spray and I resorted to scraping them off with the side of the tool and my fingernails. We're pretty sure we got them all off and hopefully I won't come down with lymes disease (half joking, but being serious!). The night sky that evening was beautiful and would be our only night to see the stars.
Here we're trying to dry out our soaked from sweat clothes.
*Water from the lake will taste like fish water, unless you put some flavor it it!
We got back on the trail after breakfast the next morning. Since our clothes only got wetter overnight, we stopped at lunch and tried drying them out in the sun while we ate. There's Shawn setting up the clothes line.
Eating our lunch and checking the map, in the shade, next to Prang Pond.
The bugs literally bugged me on the first day, so I became One with the bug net the rest of the trip. It made a huge difference!
We hiked 8.3 miles on day two and camped at the Plum Creek Camping Area. Again drying our clothes. I'm pretty sure I heard a pack of coyotes during the night and kept praying they would't come closer. I was relieved when I heard them getting farther and farther away.
We got started early on our third day because that would be our longest hiking day. We had 12.6 miles to get to our next camp.
Railroad track in the early morning light. Note to self: no matter how much big spray you put on, walking through the wet, tall grass will wash it off immediately and you will get eaten alive….again. No ticks, but mosquitos love me.
We were excited to stop at the Fox Den Shelter for lunch, but sad that it had already been taken by some other hikers. We were looking forward to relaxing in the shade, but the picnic table was just fine to rest our feet too.
After lunch, we hopped back on the trail at this sign.
Luckily, we missed stepping on this baby turtle. That is our water bottle cap.
Filling up and sterilizing our water at one of the creeks. Had this summer not been so wet, I think we would have been hurting to find water along our hike.
Shawn found a beat up OtterBox case along the trail, so he snagged it and made his own selfie stick!
By then end of our third day, my feet were done! We both had blisters, but my feet just ached. I was glad to stop and get those boots off. We camped at one of the Back Country Camping spots.
The good thing about being stinky is that you both stink, so you can't really smell each other. We called this scent smoky fresh. Smelling like campfire is better than smelling what we really smelled like!
I actually wore a long sleeved shirt!
The last two nights were pretty cool, which was really nice.
We were both pretty sure we heard some animal, during the night, trying to get into our food bag, which we hung from string between two trees. We thought there was no way anything could get it. When we got up the next morning, we saw that the bag was fine, but that something had eaten up the foam handle on Shawn's trekking pole! Needless to say, the thought of a rodents germs being on that, made him decide to not use it.
We saw this little plant a couple of times along the trail. We need to find out what it is.
Marker along the trail.
This was one of our favorite areas on the trail.
Pine needles under your feet feel like walking on foam.
It was wonderful!
Our last day took us through some pretty cool areas.
This was called Rock Shelter/Low Gap.
It was down in the creek area and had there been water in it, we would have been walking through the water a lot of the time.
We came off the trail at this sign and hit a gravel road. We had less than a mile to go from here.
My feet were literally done on day four and seeing our car, was awesome! We totaled 39.7 miles and it was a great experience! It was much harder than I expected, but I'm glad it was a little more challenging and that I was able to do it - I had no worries about it being hard for Shawn to do.
I'm glad we did our first big hike together in Indiana and hopefully we'll be able to plan another one soon….but not too soon.
