An Occurence near Carpenter Creek

 An excerpt from my Summer 2023 bike trip report (following the Great Northern Bikepacking Route from Duluth to the far eastern confines of Canada, and then south down the Eastern Divide):

Disclaimer: I wrote this initially when in a very dark, bitter place.  Therefore, please know that the following excerpt is filled with counterproductive biases and stereotypes. I apologize.

 

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a beautiful, remote, sparsely populated place, but attracts its share strange folks, such was the case of the angry, paranoid, dangerous “Yooper” that I encountered at a campground near Grand Marais, Michigan (not to be confused with the picturesque town located on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota). 

But first some context. This Grand Marais has been overrun by “power-sports” enthusiasts. A community of nonwalkers whose only mode of transport requires an internal combustion engine. For most of the year, “Mad Max” type ATVs (festooned with large flags proudly waving the Stars & Stripes), now also known as Side-by-Sides, are employed. In the winter they require huge snowmachines (equipped with all sorts of accessories including everything from heated seats to the kinds of helmets used by F35 fighter pilots). Heading into this Grand Marais, the bike-packer will also encounter big loud 4X4 trucks & jeeps equipped with gigantic wheels and tires, deafening motorcycles, monster trucks hauling monster powerboats (aka speed boats equipped with double engines each the size of an industrialized refrigerator, or fishing boats designed to go seventy miles per hour, or pontoons the size of Mississippi barges, or super powered water-jets, and the like). All are equipped with space-aged radar systems designed to find and destroy even the most wily of fish. Furthermore, in the long winter months, snowmobiles capable of going 100 mph dominate the trails. A system of trails that are strategically designed to speedily get the motorized rider from one bar to the next. As mentioned above, one is confronted with all sorts of flags proudly waving in the wind. Causing some to question their own commitment to unquestioned, sycophantic, allegiance to our federal leadership.  I can be included in this confused group, but I will try harder!  

Requisite flags flying from vehicles and campsites that proclaim to their likeminded neighbors that all who reside here are of the same exclusive, patriotic tribe. Namely, the “Don’t thread on me,” “Biden’s Not My President,” “F&*^ Biden,” Trump 2024,” “Take Back America,” etc., etc., tribe. Note: Remember this was June 2023, before the Great Orange Messiah came to power for a second time. 

Of course with these off-road vehicles and boats comes huge trailers, and/or massive recreational vehicles, so as to house the people in the comforts they have come to require as they relax after enjoying a few hours of drunken, reckless speeding through the backcountry or in the water. 

Back to the crazed Yooper encounter. I had put in a good day’s effort and was looking to set up camp. I found a pretty much empty campground that was on the edge of Grand Marais and looked to be run by the township. It was only around 4:00 p.m., so I parked the bike next to a picnic table and set about preparing to cook up a meal. I gave no indication that I was intending on camping there, per the 5:00 p.m. Rule (see endnotes). This rule follows the theory that all city employees knock off from work 5 p.m. at the very latest and so if one waits until after that time, chances are good that he/she will be able to camp for free, provided that the frugal camper is out of the area before 7:00 A.M. the next morning. 

Now remember that Camp Hosts wreck this theory, so always look for campsites that don’t employ these rather sad, downtrodden people. Camp Hosts despise bikepackers because they know in their hearts that we are free and they are caged. They will make you pay the full amount, the same amount as the guys driving the rigs that rival the Titanic in size. When I would ask politely, “Dear Kind Camp Host, Sir, I have just a tiny tent and I shall be gone before the sun comes up, can I just camp over there on that little blank piece of land, for free or for say ten bucks? I often hear back,“No way, buddy, you pay, everyone else is required to pay to stay here, you’re not special, it's not my problem if you do not want to use the full on hook-ups, in any event, you need to pay the full price.”

Of note- Bear in mind that Camp Hosts (especially when stuck in sad little local campgrounds, like this one) by definition are almost always rather pathetic, forlorn retirees. Presumably, they have agreed to act as a kind of camp-cop in exchange for a free place to park their RVs for long periods of time. Such arrangements, to my way of thinking, constitutes a Faustian bargain in that these camp-cops initially sold everything they owned to buy an RV with the aim to embark upon a sojourn of freedom but in doing so has agreed to stay put and "police" an area that is restrictive and confining. He's stuck. In other words, now in his mid 60s or early 70s, after a lifetime of unsatisfying work, the typical camp cop had finally had it with his myopic and unsatisfying life. So, finally, after years of self-loathing and frustration, with his sad working years past him, now in his last few years, he seeks to break free and travel, to experience nature first hand, to see the world, before it’s too late! But even before he can leave the state in which he bought the huge RV, due to financial woes (especially expensive gas prices caused by Biden, Obama, Hillary and the other libs), and/or a nagging wife that is predisposed to car-sickness, and/or a sore back that is inflamed if he gets behind the wheel for too long, he finds himself stuck in a campground, just a few hundred miles from the pathetic town he grew up in and worked in for his entire life. Stuck with his unhappy wife, held prisoner in a flimsy house-on-wheels that is rapidly depreciating, does not make for a happy camp host. A campground like the one I am describing, being stuck there for the entire season, no wonder they are bitter men. I digress.

In any event, there was no apparent Camp Host that I could find at this particular campground, nor did I spy any information on the fees involved. As usual, while I was the only one looking to camp in the tent section (very few use tents now to camp), there were, I’d estimate, twenty to twenty-five big RVs, as well as their required accompaniments of “power sport” vehicles & boats, parked in the massive slots that provide all the water and electricity needed to run massive air-conditioning units, multiple giant TV screens, huge stoves & ovens, refrigerators & freezers etc. etc.

Between me and these RVs was a run-down building that housed the bathrooms as well as an outside sink. I needed some water, so I walked over to the building and filled my cook pot with water using the outdoor sink. As I was filling the pot, an old guy limped past me and entered the bathroom. I then returned to the picnic table, lit the stove, got the pot of water on the stove, and then ambled over to a more shaded and secluded area to make a couple phone calls. About fifteen minutes later (I remember the water was boiling) I returned to the picnic table and added the boiling water to a dehydrated camp-meal, fixed a cup of tea, and then decided that I should go ahead and fill a few water bottles as well because I still had not decided if I would stay and camp or head out and try to get in a few more miles before settling down for the evening. 

I was essentially waiting to see if a Camp Host appeared or if, as 5:00 p.m. approached, a city worker would drive by on the last of his daily rounds. In any event, to get more water, I again strolled over to the side of the building and the sink. While filling the water-bottles, I made eye-contact with and then waved to a collective group of four older beer-drinking and smoking, mean-spirited Yoopers sitting around a camp fire next to a couple of school bus-sized RVs (with Michigan license plates). Included in the group was the old man that had previously walked past me and entered the bathroom. When they saw me (it was obvious that they wanted me to see them), the guy that had gone into the bathroom angrily screamed an obscenity at me. He was tall, but stooped, sickly thin, unshaven, and clad in typical U.P. uniform- camouflaged shirt and pants. I’d bet he was at least seventy-five years old, but who knows, that kind of lifestyle can really age a guy. I was momentarily befuddled, taken aback, but not scared. He was really a pathetic sight, to be honest. I moved towards him, taking a few strides with certainty or confidence; as he, with labored effort, slowly stood up and moved a half-step towards me. I immediately noticed that he was armed. Wearing an old school revolver on his belt. A long barreled six-shooter, like the kind John Wayne used to tame the Wild West! Who does that? Who wears a gun while sitting in a cheap camp-chair drinking beers and smoking cigarettes with his wife and another couple at a half-empty campground in the U.P. of Michigan? I’ll tell you who does that—apart from lots of crazies— in this case, a very old, crazy, angry, paranoid, confused, and dangerous “Yooper!” I simply said, “What’s up?” He was so angry, he could hardly talk, his voice cracking with emotion, like he was about to cry, like a forsaken school girl. Shaking, trembling, he finally blurted out, “You locked me in the bathroom!” By this point, close enough to touch him, I told him that he was crazy and needed help. I said something to the effect of, “Look you’re crazy, why would I lock you in the bathroom? You are confused, you need help, you need to calm down, no one locked you in the bathroom.” Then, for good measure, I talked over him, addressing the wretched people he was with, of whom were still sitting around the fire, heads down, trying to disappear, as they were obviously embarrassed, confused, and probably scared of him. He looked and acted the part—a stereotypical coward/bully, child abuser, wife beater, a ne'er-do-well. As clear and as calm as I could deliver my message, I declared something to the effect of, “Hey, this man is losing his mind, he needs help, he has dementia. You guys need to get him some help, plus he is dangerous, he is paranoid, you need to get the gun away from him.” They said nothing to me, they ignored me, as his wife (I think it was his wife?) pleaded with him to come back to the group. “Joe, calm down, it’s ok, it’s ok, come back, hey Joe…”.  Finally, he turned and stumbled back, not to the group circle, but limping over and opening the RV door and disappearing. It was a really bizarre moment. I never really felt threatened, for he seemed too pathetic and even perhaps physically incapable of using the gun. Still angry, confused old men and guns are not a good mixture. Needless to say, I elected to move on and camp in the woods some ten miles down the road. A massive number of people in this country have an obsessive, fanatical, addiction to guns. What a mess!  It's a dangerous embarrassment.

To this day, I have no idea what he was talking about, or what got him so perplexed and angry. Yet based on my own investigation (which I conducted after leaving that group of aged malcontents), I think what happened was this— The door leading into the bathroom, upon inspection, was indeed hard to open and close. In fact, before he entered, the bathroom door was held ajar by a large rock. So I think, given that he saw me over at the sink as he was walking into the bathroom: I think he shut the door, did his business, and subsequently when he went to exit the bathroom, he was unable to open the door. The door was jammed shut. In his panicked frustration combined with his loss of cognitive reality (and he was probably well on his way to being intoxicated), he surmised that as some kind of prank, I had locked him into the bathroom. I don’t know how long he was in the bathroom or how he got out? But it could not have been for more than ten or maybe fifteen minutes. Maybe one of the others had gone up there and released him or maybe he was eventually able to pry the door open, but in his clouded paranoid mind, the small mind of a malevolent, ignorant, drunk, I had been the culprit, the cause of his brief imprisonment. In his angry and confused state of mind, I had purposefully locked him in the bathroom. It's not too hard to foresee that as his cognitive abilities inevitably continue to decline, his paranoia increases, along with his violent tendencies, that he will become a very dangerous armed man. I am sure that this scenario plays out everyday in America where almost half the population places gun ownership above all else. So it goes. 

Endnotes: 

The 5 “O’clock rule: This rule is a part of a kind of a personal Five Commandants I follow when on a long bike ride. [Disclaimer, just like with the Ten Commandments, these indicts act as a guide and thus sometimes get violated, even by committed disciples.] They are as follows: Thou shall…1. Never ever stay in a motel. 2. Never, ever snub another rider. Acknowledge and celebrate the kinship that riders share.  Wave and say “hi” to the approaching rider(s) and give every possible indication that you have time to stop and converse. You’d be surprised how many touring bicyclists participate in the hurtful act of snubbing their fellow riders. So sad, 3. Never feel constrained by the lack of a partner. Going solo is fine, maybe even for the better, so if you can’t find anyone else to go with you, go alone.  4. Never pay for camping, think 5:00 P.M. Rule, 5. Never underestimate the recuperative powers of a good night’s rest and the power of a solid, well-conceived overall plan-of-action. Or simply, “When in doubt, set up the tent, take a long nap, then after a good rest, look at the plan and make modifications, don’t quit.” Hasty decisions made in the heat of the moment will cause bad outcomes or even abandonment. In other words, have a well conceived plan and in that plan should be a component of flexibility, complete with a Plan B and Plan C. 

 

The expense involving tent  camping in most state and national parks has become excessive, sometimes as high as $50, but commonly at least $30. It’s even higher for private campgrounds.  Crunching the numbers (gas, maintenance, RV camp fees, etc.), I would wager that living in an RV for significant periods of time is significantly more expensive than traveling around in a car and staying in motels.