Middle Earth Ranger Forum

We have returned from another glorious adventure in the wilds of Southern Indiana!

There will be more images and other material forthcoming, but for a quick recap of what we've been up to, here's a bit of our adventure in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness and Lake Monroe.

Looks great, it's amazing the opportunities watercraft open up.

Looking forward to more.

Nice photo's

It has been a desire of ours for years to get out in some canoes and paddle-in to a location, but so many factors have to line up. Particularly the long distances people travel to some of our treks, so someone local would have to be able to provide the equipment, we'd have to have water access to a wilderness area, and we'd have to be able to get back to our starting point without a vehicle shuffle/pick-up.

We finally got everything to line up this year. I've taken a new job and moved (again!) an hour south of where I was previously, which has put me right in the heart of Indiana Trekking territory. The Deam Wilderness, which we've MERS-trekked in twice now, is on one section of the shore of Lake Monroe, the largest reservoir in Indiana, and we found a free boat launch that would allow us to park overnight. Couple these discoveries with my acquisition of a few boats this year, and we finally pulled it off.

We were out for two nights; we paddled in on Friday afternoon, and then relocated to a second site on Saturday after exploring around for a bit. This also marks the first overnight trek with MERS I've taken a hawk on, which was an interesting experiment in logistics that panned out well. Grip (this season's bird) did a great job, and nearly caught a chipmunk on our first evening.

We made some pretty serious headway in our knowledge and practical application of leaf-litter bedding, and slept quite comfortably, particularly on the second night.

More content coming up!

Oh wow, that looks amazing. I miss taking a canoe out and paddling the river. Very much looking forward to further images and stories!

As usual you are making me extremely jealous, haha!

This looks like it was an absolute blast! I can’t wait to see more! I’ve wanted to do a canoe-in camping trip for ages myself, but just as you say, the logistics are difficult. Hopefully one day I can realize that dream myself! Meanwhile I will live vicariously through your explots!

Alright, we've gotten ourselves all caught up after our adventure, and wanted to share it with you in a way you could come along...so join us! It's also available on the society facebook page.

Awesome video

You guys are so, so cool.

SierraStrider wrote:You guys are so, so cool.

You know, we've been trying for years to convince ourselves that that's the case, to no avail...but we're glad to have like-minded individuals such as yourself to pretend with!

... WOW! That looks like an incredible time!


You guys are all most assuredly very cool.

I'm going to have to jump on the bandwagon here and assert that you guys are the coolest. Honestly, my main source of inspiration other than Tolkien. It's going to take a long time but one day I hope to reach the level you guys are at in my own skills and experience. Heck, I've shared things on Facebook and Instagram from MERS and people that I would never have expected to be interested in this hobby have commented on how cool it was.

The video was excellent!

Cimrandir wrote:The video was excellent!

It really was, and getting stuff just right like that time and practice.

Thanks for putting out such lovely stuff guys.