Hoosier National Forest/Monroe Lake

This post is a little tardy because of the new addition to our family: Mater, our new AussieDoodle. (post coming soon)

Memorial Day weekend was definitely a great adventure. We spent 3 nights on the shores of Monroe Resevoir/Lake, which is just south of Bloomington, Indiana in the Hoosier National Forest. I’d been pumped up about this trip for sometime, since I believed it was going to be a long time before I would have another outdoor adventure experience like in Arizona. I was right. Although it took nearly 5 hours to drive down to southern Indiana, I thought I might be a little more remote and secluded. There were plenty of people out paddling, fishing, and camping Memorial Day weekend. I’m pretty sure this would have been much, much better during a non-holiday weekend or during the week - not that it was ‘bad’ at all!

None-the-less, it was all still well worth it. After the lengthy drive, we arrived at Paynetown Rec Area, our first night campground fairly early on Thursday afternoon. We purchased our overnight pass and our Indiana, non-motorized boat permit at the gate. Awesome! Another sticker for our boats. We look well traveled! It didn’t seem crowded at all. As we later found, it was a good thing we arrived a day early to beat the crowds. Our campsite was on the water, but it typically is not a waterfront site. The lake was about 15 feet above the summer pool. REALLY HIGH! Many boat ramps and parking lots were under water. This makes me think of the arid Southwest and how they dry up so frequently and here, well, there’s an abundance of water. In any case, we set up our first night’s campsite and awaited the arrival of our friends, Mike and Caryn. They arrived around midnight, I think. I fell asleep. I woke up and chatted - briefly - then went back to sleep.

In the morning, we went to check out our options for parking and put-in spots. We had been told by the DNR that we may not be able to pass under the bridge at the causeway because of the water level. We needed to know so we could determine which side of the causeway to put-in. Boats were easly going under the bridge, as it turns out, but we decided to put-in on the East (other) side of the causeway, anyway. Back to the campsite to break down, mount up, and head out. Off we went.

We parked AND launched from a parking lot! The water level came to about half way up the handicap parking signs. Boats were not able to launch from there, but it was pretty nice to launch our kayaks here. No mud, easily wade-able, low risk of tipping, very gradual incline. We loaded up our boats, tucked the cars away for the couple of nights alone in the parking lot and headed out onto the open water. We saw this sign just beyond the end of the parking lot. Hilarious!

After getting out into the open water, the clouds began rolling in, but we were okay with it. There was only a 30% chance of rain, according to the forecast. Wrong. We gave it about a half hour and it changed to 100%. Fortunately, we were close to shore. We pulled off, a little wet, put up the tarp, and had lunch.

When the rain subsided, we decided to explore. Mike and went off hiking to see what we could find on the other side of the peninsula we landed on. We found lots of pine, animal runs, a deer stand in a tree and of course, more high water/shoreline. Our legs after drying a little were getting even more drenched from the tall grasses. Aside from the possible danger of the dying, falling branches of the tall trees, we had found a couple of potential sites.

On our way back to the tarp, we stumbled upon a few wild critters. At one of the potential campsites, we found this little guy, chilling on the shore. I had to bring him back to show the girls. As we continued on back to the tarp, I was hiking ahead of Mike, who suddenly let out this momentarily disturbing “Pssssst!” I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to see what the deal was. Mike was pointing to a small clearing in the brush. I had just stepped inches from it along the animal run we were using as our trail. Looking down, I saw a fawn. Bambi! Spotted back and all. Just lying there. We weren’t sure if it was dead, sick, injured, sleeping or just scared. We were “this” close to it and it didn’t budge. We called the girls over using hand signals and signaling to be quiet. We huddled around for a few minutes in amazement and worry. I had been trying to hide the turtle, so as not to get the girls making too much noise and scare the fawn. A sleeping fawn trumps a boring turtle, though. Suddenly, the fawn jumped up and ran off - quickly! The turtle; Well, let’s just say he was happy not to receive as much attention as we set him down near the water. He didn’t move. We didn’t wait. I was just stunned and fascinated. This is why I love the outdoors and wilderness. I guess I could see this stuff at Lincoln Park Zoo, but those animals are sadly ruined. These animals are real and wild.

Time to move on to find our campsite. We packed up what little we unloaded for our lunch stop and head north up the shore. We didn’t have to go far. We pull off and started setting up camp. The new tarp definitely came in handy, as it provided more dry space around our small two-person tent and gave us a place to hang dry gear and clothes. It also gave our firewood harvest a place to keep dry. The tarp is a cheap brown plastic one with brass grommets. It’s very light and the grommets are nice…except near the seam running down the center, there developed a leak. A split. Probably easily fixable, nothing huge. It’s still a great value and serves its purpose well.

We were able to get out in the kayaks and fish just beyond the trees, which was about 100 feet or so from the elevated shoreline. Fishing from the shore would be impossible with all of the tree cover - no room to cast. We (Rachael!) were catching small crappie like crazy. All but the last few got put back. Rachael was on fire with the fishing this weekend. I can be jealous and proud at the same time, right? When I finally caught the striped bass and 3 other crappie to try out for dinner (snack, more like it), it was time to keep ‘em. The bass was tasty.

We spent day 2 (Saturday) exploring Monroe Lake. () Our paddle, by my calculations was about 11 miles. It was great to see the all of the [mostly] undisturbed forest from a kayaking perspective. It’s one of the pleasures of this type of sport. Human powered, low profile water-craft that allows you to access areas many other people only see by backpacking/hiking into. With the water level so high, we also got to paddle amongst the treetops of the shoreline trees!

I could write and write about all of the little experiences, but I’ll save some for you to experience on your own. If you’ve ever thought you might enjoy an experience like this - DO IT! You WILL enjoy it and remember it for a lifetime.