Posts tagged #National Forest

Wild Places in the US

Wednesday Thoughts

“National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.” - John F. Kennedy

Our Public Lands

    These last two months I have been traveling extensively through parts of the wilderness of this country. It is Amazing to see all these public lands, let it be a National Park, National reserve, National Forest or any other public land. How lucky we are that these places have been set aside, for us, for you, to enjoy. Unfortunately there are people on this planet who do not care about the wild places, greedy people who care more about money than our public lands. 

Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia's founder, is standing up for our public lands. Stand with him. Text DEFEND to 52886 by August 24.

Nature and Politics

    The video below always makes my eyes tear up, it hurts my heart to hear politicians talk about Alaska the way they do. I can only feel sorry for them, that they do not appreciate these wild places like you and I do!

For hundreds of generations, the Gwich'in people of Alaska and northern Canada have depended on the caribou that migrate through the Arctic Refuge. With their traditional culture now threatened by oil extraction and climate change, two Gwich'in women are continuing a decades-long fight to protect their land and future.

Wild Places

    This summer has made me crave more and more of the wilderness. Can you believe that I can crave more than what I have already craved. It's like a disease, it spreads and grows for each year. How do you feel about the wilderness?

Camping in Chequamegon National Forest

Memorial Day Weekend

Camping

Adventure Tuesday

Memorial Day

    Memorial Day is a big day here in the states, it is a federal holiday to honor and remember the people who have served in the united states armed forces.  Back in Alaska we always went camping or went out for a small adventure, but I haven't really done that in a while so we decided it was time for another trip! A lot of people go camping or hiking during this weekend, or have large family gatherings and BBQ festivities. We took the opportunity to go on a camping trip in the North Woods. 

North Woods

    We drove almost 5 hours north (about 279 miles, or 450km) until we arrived to the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Don't ask me to pronounce that name because its literally impossible and it sounds very funny when I try to. Memorial day weekend mean that a lot of people are on the road, driving towards their final destination. There were quite a lot of people on the roads during the first few hours but then the traffic decreased significantly and almost disappeared as we got closer and closer to the North Woods.

Camping

A lot of people on the road also mean that the campsites might all be full. There are quite a few campgrounds in and around Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. You can book some of these campsites at certain campgrounds, but the one I had looked at you had to book several days in advanced, you literally could not book it online 2 days before?!? which is ridiculous...anyway, there were plenty of first come first serve options, but, as the name entails, first come first serve. The final camping option is dispersed camping, which is allowed in National Forests, as long as you aren't close to anyones property, or close to a real campground. However, we realized that finding dispersed camping in Wisconsin might be a lot harder compared to Montana. Either way, we got a late start and figured, worst case scenario we just sleep in the car. 

Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest

    We arrived at one of the campgrounds that I have looked at during the drive, and we decided to take a left and go through one of the loops, and voila, right by the lake was one open spot at 5pm on a Saturday! W went on a short mountain bike ride, and I set up the tent!

Ticks!!!

   The temperature this weekend was so high, but that mixed with frequent rain showers made for a  very humid climate. While I was setting up the tent I discovered an insect I haven't seen for years, because we don't have them in Alaska (well they are extremely rare), I killed it as best as I could and saved it so I could get a confirmation from W. Well, W came back and I showed him and he said yup, totally, a tick! And then we started going through W who had been biking through bushes on the trail and, we found several more ticks on W, and the coming days we found countless of ticks, I seriously think we removed about 50 or so... We did get a wonderful weekend though, filled with good food and mountain biking!

    Have you been camping yet this year?