Had a weekend meetup at Clinton Lake with the KC Adventure Club. Several of us met Friday evening at the Woodridge Primitive Area and backpacked about a mile into the woods to make camp.
Saturday morning we packed up, hiked out, and drove to Overlook Park to meet more people and spend a very sweaty day hiking the North Shore trails. In the late afternoon we went to Rockhaven Park to camp. The strong unrelenting wind made everything difficult.
A smaller group of us hiked a bit there Sunday morning before an even smaller group went to Woodridge (again, for me) to hike the entire trail there. I probably only hiked 18-19 miles the whole weekend but the backpack and unseasonable heat sure made it feel like more!
There was some great scenery – interesting rocks and trees along the Land’s End trail, and wild flowers blooming everywhere.
Instead of DEET, I tried an insect repellant with Picaridin – it doesn’t dissolve synthetic materials such as clothing, tents and sleeping bags – and it seemed to work well. One mishap was that after setting up camp Friday night I found my almost-new flashlight was dead. The button had apparently gotten clicked-on and drained the batteries at some point while packed. The good news was that I had bought spare batteries a couple days earlier (even though there was no way I’d need them for a new flashlight, right?), the bad news was that they were $25 worth of CR123 lithium batteries. Ouch. I guess another mishap was the granola & protein bars melting in the heat. How did I not see that coming? I kinda had to lick them out of the wrapper and try to get more in the mouth than in the beard. Gotta rethink my trail food selection for the summer.