Exploring Hidden Trails & Abandoned Campsite / Solo Camping with my Dog

Welcome back to this week's video. Toby and I brought you up to the Chippewa National Forest and I think I might have just found another abandoned National Forest campground. Looks like this place has been empty for quite a while. I was on Google Maps and I found what looks like a really good dispersed campsite and on its way there I passed a National Forest campground sign. That's when I pulled in here and there hasn't been anybody here for a long time and that dispersed campsite might not exist anymore either. Those tables have seen better days. There's a bathroom back here. We got to check that out. It smells like it hasn't been dumped in a while. Over the years I've found a number of campsites just like this but I get people that tell me that the Park Service, it doesn't just let go of campgrounds. I think they just let go of this campground. This looks like an old woodshed. I'm waiting to find some tools or something. It's like they just walked away from this place. Anything good in here? There's some decent spots here but this whole campground's got this really weird vibe. Reminds me of the Friday the 13th movies. You can tell that nobody's been here for a long time plus poison ivy is everywhere but check out the sights. Actually really nice. Number 33. There was a lot of campsites here at one time. Makes me wonder why they closed this place down. I think we should probably go look at that dispersed campsite out on that point. See if that's going to work for us. Otherwise we're going to be stuck staying here. Good boy. These places always feel just a little bit strange. I think people may have used this as a dispersed campsite at one time. You can see right there was a fire pit and it looks like they had some rocks there for a fire pit. I don't think we're going to be staying here. What is that? Maybe a leech net or a trap for minnows. There's another one on the shore. I have no clue what those are for. Dude's flying on that boat. He's probably trying to get away from the rain which is exactly what we should be doing. The rain started coming down in sheets. I couldn't even see the road. The good news is the rain has stopped. We're back in the forest. I think we're going to find something good. I was hoping this trail wasn't going to be too wet. I think I lucked out. She's getting a little bit tight now. It looks like we did it again. There's only one spot back here and it looks like it's all ours. It looks like we might have another day of sunshine and little drops of rain. I'll show you the campsite right on this lake. It's absolutely beautiful. Oh, check this out. There's a bunch of holes on the bank and I'm thinking that turtles are laying eggs. The reason why I say that is because something got in this hole and dug up all the eggs. That or maybe they hatched. It looks like the rain is going to start back up again. The other thing I was going to show you at this campground, there's a lot of wild roses and a lot of poison ivy. I think we're going to take Toby on his morning walk quick and get back in the camper. The weather channel was saying it was going to be 83 degrees and sunny today. The truth is I would take this over that any day. The rain has kicked up the mosquitoes. It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet out here. We're going to get back in the camper. I think I just found the solution to the mosquitoes. Great outdoors. It's a product from Canada. A viewer sent it. This is going to come in handy this weekend. The rain's been on and off for a better part of the morning. In a little bit here we'll go out and clean up that campfire. Oh, you got to check this out. This is really cool. Every year, about June, water temperature is going to get up to 70 degrees. The male sunfish are going to come in and start fanning their tails to make a nice bed up by shore. The females are hanging out a little bit deeper water. As they're swimming by, what they're looking for is the nicest looking beds and the brightest and biggest looking males. They're going to go into those beds, lay their eggs, and the males are going to stand guard. They're super easy to catch this time of year because they're really aggressive. They don't even need to be hungry. That fish there would bite a piece of bread if I threw it out there. I don't think we're going to try and fish for him. Maybe we'll see if we can get some bass later, but we'll let him do his thing. I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping the mosquitoes out of the campsite. I've got a coil going here, one going up by the camper, a thermosil up there, a thermosil on the other side of the camper, and then the citronella right there. We're going to clean this fire pit out. Maybe get a fire going in a little bit. These bigger lobs never burn. Someone must have been just trying to smoke out the campsite. I can see there's a lot of rocks buried in there. I think if I dig this pit out, probably six inches, I'll find a lot more rocks and we'll just rebuild this whole fire pit. That looks so much better. I have no idea what all that rebar is for. We'll get some use out of it. What do you think, Toby? Looking good? Thanks, buddy. I think I'll kill two birds with one stone. I'll be able to clean up all this brush and have something to It kind of circles all the way up the shoreline. Last night when I brought the camper in here, I set the steps down and noticed that I put them down right into a patch of poison ivy. They say leaves of three let it be. Well, that's true. There's also a couple other plants that have three leaves. The way I always look for poison ivy, and I could be wrong, tell me down in the comments, but what I'm looking for is the three leaves at one center leaf always sticks out a little bit further. If you look real closely, you almost see little hairs on the plant. They come in different colors and sometimes they can be a dull green and sometimes they can almost be like a reddish color. Sometimes they're glossy and sometimes they're not. It seems like whenever I find poison ivy, I find raspberry plants and wild sarsaparilla. If you're thinking about leaves of three let it be, you could easily confuse all of those. Let me show you. This guy right here has got three leaves. But we can see it has thorns and as it matures, it's going to get more leaves along its stem. This guy right back there, that's poison ivy. Some people might look at this and see these three leaves and think, I don't know poison ivy, but wild sarsaparilla has multiple leaves going down the stem. Not poison ivy. Seems like everybody has a different tolerance level when it comes to poison ivy. Some people are going to break out in blisters just seeing it on the video. Myself, I'm a little bit lucky. I can walk through them, brush up against the plant, not going to have any issues. It's not really until I start walking through them, crushing them up, getting the oils on the bottom of my shoes, and then if I use my shoe to scratch my leg because of a mosquito bite, I'll get a rash there. But if you don't know what it looks like, don't take my advice. Go on to Google, check it out for yourself. I think everybody should have a good general idea of what it looks like. I mean, this stuff is absolutely everywhere. I am not a professional by any means. These little branches are going to go up in a hurry. that's how we're making supper. We're going to be making something really simple to throw on the fire tonight. I'm going to cut up some sausage, put it in a foil bag with some vegetables, stick a bunch of butter in there. We're going to call it supper. Shouldn't take too long, but it's going to taste really good. We're going to start with some green onions, one red pepper. I'm going to cut the ends off some brussel sprouts. We're going to dice up four pola sausage, four tablespoons of butter, well maybe five. Putting in about a pound of these small potatoes. We're going to put in the rest of our vegetables and then we're just going to close it up. I really like these bags. I like them better than making my own bags with aluminum foil just because they're so heavy duty. People always ask me where do I pick them up at, so I'll just throw a link right on top of the screen for you. That's going to be good. No way. We got turtles laying eggs right on the bank of river. We got to check this out. I'm going to try not to scare her. I'm not going to bother you. bury some of them coals, put the dirt back on it, and we'll put the sausage and potatoes right on top of that. Then I'll just flip it every probably 10 minutes or so. No doubt that it's really hot in there. Probably also just move some of these coals away from the bag. Let me bring you up to speed. I think I made a few mistakes. Here's what's happening. Whenever I go to flip it, the ground is not really hot. It's warm but it's wet as well. I think what's happening is I'm pulling a lot of moisture up out of the ground with the heat and it's not cooking as fast as I thought it would. So I put some more coals in here and we're going to be cooking directly on top of the coals. Of course it's going to take a little bit to get them warm. This is going to make things go a little bit quicker because I've been at it for a little over an hour now and there's no way that this should take an hour. This bag hasn't puffed up and I don't even really smell it yet. We'll get there. It's got to be done. It smells amazing. Looks like a jiffy pop bag. That's going to be good. Well let's see what it looks like. That is going to be so good but there's a lot there. I got leftovers. A little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper. That is going to be good. It took almost two hours but totally worth it. Even the brussels sprouts were good. I'm going to finish this, get the camper cleaned up, we'll sit by the fire for a little bit. Nothing better than a hot shower before bed. that solar panel up on the roof is bringing in a little bit of something. Maybe the power station's got something left in it. Yeah that looks about right. Last fall I said that the house batteries wouldn't make it through another winter so I think we're doing pretty good. It's nice to have cooler temperatures out here. Yesterday it was getting a little bit warm. Temperature's only getting into the mid 80s but humidity is what really gets you. This morning it's about 60 degrees. Perfect out here. And there's a little bit of a breeze and it's keeping the bugs away. Couldn't ask for a better morning. There's a lot of deer tracks out here. I've had a doe and fawn hanging out around the campsite. I can't catch her on camera. I only get a glimpse of the white tail bolting off into the woods. Here's another dispersed campsite. I call these hunters camps. They're not on the river or anything like that. It's big enough to pull the ice castle in. Set up camp during deer season. I like to stay in these in the fall when the leaves are changing. In the summertime I don't use them too often just because they're usually deep in the woods. A lot of bugs. But if we come back here we're gonna have to clean this is what I picture right here. These really big towering red pines and just perfect dispersed you for coming out with Toby and me. We'll do this again next week. Until then, be kind, be honest, and we'll see you down the road.