Some years back, about 1976, a co-worker and I use to two track in the Upper Pennsulia. On one of these excursions, while we were lost by the way, we found Lost Lake. It wasn’t until later that we found what the name of the lake was, but what we did know, was that it was full of brook trout. A few years later while I was on vacation here, I took my oldest son, who was around 8, and my younger brother back to that lake. It turned into an adventure that was every bit as exciting as the first time.
We loaded on our camping gear and my mom’s 17′ alumacraft canoe, along with all the fishing gear we could stuff on the Olds I was driving at the time. It didn’t have four wheel drive, or a high clearance, but what it had was mass. After leaving the highway North of Seeney, we dropped down onto a two-track and headed Northwest towards the lakes. The idea was we were going straight to Lost lake, and camp on the two-track that runs right alongside it. There isn’t ANY traffic on those trails so there wasn’t any problem with creating any kind of congestion on the thoroughfares. I remembered from previous trips that coming into that lake from the West side, I’d have to navigate around some hellacious holes, so I opted for the East side. Everything was going along just fine until we came to a very flat, and as it turned out, flooded area. I stopped the car and took a walk down the two track, walking in ankle deep water to see if there was any suprises hiding under that water. After walking maybe a quarter mile, I turned around and went back to the car. I told the guys it looked bad, but the sand was hard packed and it never got any deeper than my ankles. After we’d traveled that quarter mile and an extra two feet, the bottom dropped out. According to the map book, there are two different ways to get to this lake and I probably should have taken the one I knew. Instead I took “The road less traveled” and paid the price.
As soon as I hit bottom I threw it into reverse and nailed it, but all that did was dig a nice hole under my tire and then I was on the frame. Tony and I got out of the car to have a look and new right away that we were in trouble. The first thing that flashed through my head was the distance that we’d allready traveled and how long it was going to take to get out to the highway for some help. The second thing that went through my head was the hell I was going to catch from both my wife and my mother from getting into this situation in the first place. I remembered that I had a hatchet and a car jack in the trunk and with all the trees around the area, I could cut up enough wood to get us out. We left Jon in the car, (after telling him we were on an adventure and this was part of the fun) and started looking for downed trees we could use. In the hunting around part, I came across a patch of Blueberries about an acre across and immediatly went back and got the other two. I told them it was “Break time!” and carried Jon to where it wasn’t flooded and FULL of berries. We ate our fill, and bagged up as much as we could carry, then went back to the task at hand. Tony carried the trees as I cut them down, or cut them up and after some work we had enough I hoped. We set up the car jack and started stuffing trees under the tire until we worked it up high enough to get moving again. Tony and I talked about which way to go, but it didn’t take long to decide which way was right. I put it in reverse again, and once we started moving, we got out of there as fast as I could go. We backed up for almost a mile before I found a spot that was wide enough, and dry enough to attempt turning around. It wasn’t 10 minutes later when the trouble started again.
We were heading back down to where I could get back to the “The road WELL traveled”, when the thunderstorm hit. When it rains in the Lower Pennisula, it just rains. Water drops falling out of the sky, a little wind, maybe some lightening. When it rains up there, it POURS, when the wind blow’s, things fall over. When the lightening strikes, trees around you explode. What a ride! We were going down that two-track as fast as that old Olds could travel, and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get out of there alive. In a stretch of a half mile, we saw three trees get nailed, and they wen’t but 20′ when they’d get hit. If I’d watched it in a movie, I’d have given the special effects people an Acadamy Award. It lasted another 20 minutes and it was all over.
We decided to stop for lunch, so when we got to a high spot, I pulled over and got out the cooking gear. I grilled up some ham and cheese sandwich’s and when we got done, Jon told me he had to go poo poo. The bracken fern along there was as tall as he was; he wan’t real sure if he could squat and poop with all that vegitation and the animals that probably lived in there. I spotted a nice Jack Pine that had a limb large enough to hold him, and high enough that he could see if there were any bears sneaking up to eat him. He dropped his drawers and I set him on it and turned around. I wished I’d taken a picture of it, but he was too embarassed enough as it was.
It was getting late by the time we got everything back in the car, so I decided we’d stop at Sunken Lake for the night. Sunken Lake looks like it was caused by a meteor impact. It’s completly surrounded by a hill and has a surface size of maybe 5 acres. Huge White Pines are growing everywhere, so there is very little wind to distrurb the surface and it’s absolutly beautiful. From the top of the hill, you can see the bottom in any spot, and see all the fish that are in it. When we got down by the water we felt as though we were the only people on Earth. All we could hear were the red squerills bitching at us for being there, and the sound of pine cones dropping through the limbs. It must have been harvest time for those little guys and what a racket they made. From any one spot on that lake, you could see the entire perimiter so when Jon asked if he could go exploring, I told him to have at it. When he was down at the other end of the lake, he cut a fart and I told him to excuse himself! I didn’t even have to yell, just spoke loud, and his head jerked around towards me and he started laughing. We talked back and forth for a few minutes and then he went on with his fishing. We camped by the lake side, and went out in the canoe as the sun started to drop. It became very dark while we were out there, and soon we started feeling our fishing rods jerking like we were getting bites, but we wern’t. Jon turned on his flashlight and pointed it towards his rod tip and saw what the problem was; there were thousands of bats. They seemed to think that the rod tip was an insect and would fly by and take a snatch at it. We instinctivly ducked our heads down, but never had one hit us on the way back to the shore. We slept there that night and after having a breakfast during one of the most beautiful sunrises, we were on our way again to Lost Lake.
The area around Sunken Lake had been logged off some years before, but soon we came into a forest that I think was still virgin timber. It was like driving into night when we passed from that area into where Lost Lake is. Instead of Jack Pine, we were driving by Maples and Beech that three people wouldn’t be able to hold hands reaching around them. We saw hawks swooping down out of these trees, and grabbing squerills from the ground. At one point a Timber Wolf dashed across the two-track not 30′ in front of us. The D.N.R. were claiming at the time, that there were no Wolves in the U.P., but as we all know, the D.N.R. lives in a world of denial. About when I started thinking that I’d made another blunder, I saw off to our right a clearing through the trees and then a patch of blue from the lake.
Lost Lake is true to it’s name. When your either sitting along side it, or out on it, you feel as though your lost in a time long gone. The lake is three times the size of Sunken Lake, but you can’t see along the shoreline anywhere. That primal forest ends right at the water. If it wern’t for the two-track that runs along side it in one spot, there’d be no way to even know it’s there. The lake was a deep blue and reflected those trees everywhere. The only way to know that it wasn’t glass you were sitting on, were the brook trout rising to the surface to gobble up the insects. We unstrapped the canoe and in no time, we were out there after those fish. I tired anchoring in several spots, but with only 25′ of anchor line it didn’t do any good. Evidently, the fish were full of those insects and they didn’t seem to want anything we threw at them.
The ride there, and the time spent on that lake was a very small price to pay for the day we spent. We rode around all over that lake marveling at the sights and the smells and it’s something we’ll all remember as long we live.
