Deer River State Forest - Part 2

The dogs and I were exploring Deer River State Forest, a place we'd never been before. I saw no real hiking trails, but there were dirt lanes into the forest to reach campsites, so we picked one and gave it a try:

It was a beautiful, sunny day with birds singing in the trees. The dogs were happy and the only drawback was the myriad black flies. They were pesky, but I didn't actually get bitten:

The mottled sunshine lit up the forest with an almost eerie glow:

You may recall that I've been seeing the leaves of Canada Mayflowers springing up all through the forests we've walked, but no flowers. Well, this time we saw them starting to bloom. The weren't quite open yet, but close. You can see why they are also called Wild Lily Of The Valley:

We came to a marked campsite with a stone fire ring, a stone 3-sided fire pit and a supply of firewood. The dogs only cared about looking for spilled food. They didn't find any:


We continued on but the path got narrower. Seamus seemed to be calling his little buddy to follow him:

I enjoyed the lovely woods but the trail was becoming more indistinct:

So I decided to turn back toward our parked car. Indeed, we still had lots of forest to explore:

We passed by the campsite again and arrived at our car. I continued driving on the winding, dirt roads but saw only campsites. There were many miles of road, both paved and unpaved, and I certainly didn't explore them all:

Eventually, we hit a blacktopped county road so I turned onto it and hoped it would take us to the highway. I began passing old cabins and people's vacation cottages. I'm not sure what this one was:

This one was wired for electricity and was for sale:

This trailer and tent had solar power, This is about when I realized, by the position of the sun, that I was heading south instead of north, towards the highway. So I turned around and drove all the way back. I don't even know what road we were on here, or where it would have taken us. It certainly was remote country, though some people lived there. As for Deer River State Forest, we'll give it another try in the future: