We got another decently early start, but not as early as 46er! He was headed out trying to make good miles to get into Bainbridge. He was up nearly before the sun came out! We headed out and did some more fairly level and easy walking for most of the morning. The trails are still incredibly wet and flooded in many parts, but the humidity was gone and the sky was blue today. The thing about it finally NOT raining is that the mosquitos are crazy thick today! They were even thicker when we hit our first road walk.
A placid pond in Pharasalia Wildlife Management Area
We got back into the woods and had some fairly uneventful walking. We had slathered ourselves with picaridin to keep the bugs away and eventually walked through a CCC camp and across an old dam before slathering up again. We did a lot more walking through mixes of pine forest and boggy mess before coming to the side trail for the lean-to where we planned to eat lunch. As we headed in we ran into the caretaker for the place and talked to him for a while before taking our break.
Beautiful cascades on our downhill walk.
From here, we did some steep downhill near a creek with beautiful waterfalls before coming back uphill and through more state forest. This time, the forest was being actively logged and was pretty loud and messy. We hopped off trail and did some road walking until we got away from it and then headed down to the Otselic River. From here it was more up and down before we finally made it to our campsite for the night on Bucks Brook. This looks like the area used to have bigger sites and probably was a side trail (evidence of old signage and colored blazes.) The area is pretty washed out and buggy now though. We set up our tent and cooked dinners. We hungrily ate and climbed in early - 6 pm! It's nice to be away from the mosquitos.