Jeff and I first experienced Carlyle Lake on the first night of our bicycle tour in 2012. We'd left our brand new home just two weeks after moving there from Utah in an ill-fated attempt to ride our bicycles from home, around Lake Michigan, and back. That first day of our trip, we left later than planned. I was clearly out of shape and ill-prepared for midwestern humidity after three years of living in the arid west. The previous weeks had been filled with the usual relocation stresses, and I was coming down with a bad cold but it was 96 degrees when we got to Carlyle, and I was ready to be off the bike. We did find Dairy Queen that day, but we also found out about the misfortunes of trying to sleep in our tent while the RV just behind us decided to host a showing of Footloose by setting up a projector and a sheet hung on the side of the RV as a screen. Here is an account of the rest of that night...
Needless to say, my opinion of Carlyle Lake and the campers it attracts is not high. Additionally, the hiking trails are open only two days per week during two months of pheasant hunting in the park, so I'd been avoiding the place. However, I wanted something nearby that wasn't Silver Lake, which would be very muddy on this warm day, and that wouldn't be too challenging since my ego was bruised after yesterday's encounters with the cold wind at Pere Marquette, so I headed out to Carlyle.
Thankfully, almost no one was around. There were no impromptu showings of movies or other things to interrupt my time outdoors. There were still a couple of signs up saying that the trails were closed for pheasant season, but that was to have ended during the first week of January, so I headed out.
This park has a number of small loop trails, and the mileage on some of them seems to be a bit off. Either that or I hiked super fast for the first mile and a half. By the map, I did 8 miles, but I think it was really more like 7, so I'm going to say 7.
Early in the hike, I came to the Burnside Cemetery, where early pre-Civil War residents of the area are buried. A geocache box was near the cemetery.
Since I hadn't seen anyone yet, I decided that this place isn't half bad when there aren't annoying people around. There was a sign at the entrance saying that you couldn't bring in alcohol in containers larger than 1 gallon, so I doubt I'll come here when the campers and boaters are here, but when the lake is frozen, it's an ok place to visit. Most of the trails were covered in a thick layer of leaves, so the trails weren't too muddy, either, which was nice.
I thought this twisted stump looked like some swamp creature. Rawr!
After a few miles, I had looped back to the parking area where I took advantage of a nearby platform to enjoy a good snack in the warm sun. It was much more relaxing than my snack break yesterday since the wind wasn't buffeting me at every turn.
I then headed back out for another loop of about 3.5 miles. The two trails that made up this loop weren't as nice as the ones by the lake since they were muddier and often had plenty of these gumballs from Sweetgum trees littering the ground. Gumballs are pervasive in these parts, and they're kind of a pain to walk on because they roll and/or slide like loose gravel when you step on them. I just pretended like they were the rocks and roots of the Superior Trail and kept moving. I lost the trail a couple of times in the leaf litter before looping back to the parking lot, but I still had a nice walk in the woods on a day that felt more like April than January.
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