Another year, another seven night cabin booking at Backbone State Park. This year the weather gods more or less cooperated and we stayed all seven nights and fished all but one of the days. It was mostly hard work in brisk winds and borderline temperatures, but it was great to be on the water again and we caught trout every day we were out, sometimes in pretty marginal conditions.
We were in Cabin 5, the same place we started out with our first two night booking during spring break two years ago (feels like more than two years, which is strange, because academically the years are whipping by so fast it’s like I can barely hang on). I managed to get cabin booking organized early this year, so actually was able to make a bunch of weekend reservations during the spring. I have two weekends, including Mother’s Day, with James’s mother along in larger cabins (the house-sized Cabin 10 and the intermediate “Owl’s Nest). James and I are doing another weekend in Cabin 5. And I have a solo weekend plus a post-finals-week stretch of five nights in Cabin 5. The only downside is that Cabin 5 is showing a fair bit of wear and tear. I think we weren’t long after a renovation when we started coming, but everything is kind of banged up now. The stove is chipped, and when the oven was preheating it locked up with a flashing F10 error code. The every now and then access to cell data was enough to figure out that it meant a runaway temperature, and was most likely a failing temperature sensor. I had to trek outside and find the breaker and flip it to get it to reset. It didn’t act up again, but I cooked at a lower temperature (400 vs 450). Also, pretty sure the old septic needs emptying, as there were some occasional wafts of foulness from the bathroom drains. And the shower and handbasin drains were nearly clogged and slow draining. You got like two minutes in the shower before it threatened to overflow the stall. Natch, had I known all of that I’d have gone for a different cabin as I had my choice. I’ve stayed in Cabin 5 more than any other, and it was mainly for nostalgic reasons.
Anyway, it wasn’t the end of the world. James got the bedroom, despite my increasing arguments about age before beauty, so I was stuck on the futon with my sleeping bag liner and down quilt borrowed from my ultralight gear.
The big surprise weather-wise was the amount of snow. The snow was basically all gone from the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids area. A little bit north of Cedar Rapids we began to see a lot. By the time we got up to Backbone, it was clear it had yet to really melt. Snow everywhere, big piles of it from the plows. I was quite worried that some of the little stream access roads, which aren’t plowed in the winter, would be problematic. Temperatures were set to range from highs of 37 to 52 in Iowa City during the week. A couple of hours north, it seemed you could basically subtract six from that for the daytime highs.
Cooking is part of the whole cabin in the woods daydream. Backbone cabins are probably the closest I’ll ever get to weekends at the cabin in the woods, so bringing in groceries from the car and whatnot is part of the appeal. The first evening I made Smoky Fish Chowder, which I’ve tweaked from a New York Times recipe (bacon, leeks, potatoes, hot smoked paprika, white wine, whole milk, fish stock, thyme sprigs, Alaskan cod, sea scallops, served with oyster crackers).
The first day (Sunday March 11) we headed to STSNBN. The road was unplowed and snowy, but people had been over it recently. It would have been dodgy in the old Malibu, but the Jeep-branded crossover (plenty of clearance and genuine four wheel drive, despite it being about the poorest Jeep-branded excuse for a four wheel drive you can buy) handled it without trouble.
