Porkies spring camp trip!

 Can you believe it? It's been 5 long years since we last rented a yurt in the spring in the Porkies. With that in mind, we'll consider this our Gromit Memorial Yurt Spring Camp Trip!

Our short little adventure was from Sunday March 27th to Tuesday March 29th.

Dolly! This is Union Bay.

Finally! Me and Sandy carried packs while
Arly pulled the pulk. Little Dolly didn't have
to carry anything. Gyp!

Let's go look at the Union River.  The river is up!

Dolly stayed safely away. Puppies have a natural
fear of the water...we'll make a swimmer out of her this spring.

Snow depth near the trail head wasn't so good, but
up here near the yurt it was quite nice. Recent new snow was
deeper at higher elevation, as usual.

Made it! The 2-leggeds hiked since the surface was
hard and crusty everywhere from recent thaw and freeze.

The yurt is always a nice home-away-from-home.
And new to both of these trail mutts!

Ya Dolly, we have to collect some water.

Can we help?  Little Union River's starting to come up.

Arly! Can't I come snuggle with you up there?

Supper time! All this excitement really whets your appetite.

And full bellies cause heavy eyelids.

Monday morning. Another beautiful day for adventure.

After breakfast, we decided to back-country ski, following
the Little Union upstream. Nice terrain, and we
did discover some old logging roads. This
photo is remains of the logging road's river crossing. Our
"Porcupine Mountains Companion" book says the last
logging was salvaged after blowdown in the 1950's.

After lunch and a little break at the yurt, we headed
back out again. Here we met a friendly family from WI
out skiing on the groomed trail.

On Tuesday, it was already to pack up and head home.

We got some tussling in while they cleaned up the yurt.

Bye bye, Little Union Yurt! Hope to be back next spring.

Hiking out, since the crust was still good and firm for 
walking, we bush-whacked over towards the Union 8 bunk
cabin, then took the hiker trail to the Union Mine Interpretive
Trail. From here we took the 2-track
cut across back to the ski trail.

Hey! We got to meet some of the friendly park guys.
Including Paul, who we've seen on many our
our camp trips here. See ya next time!