The Quiet Side

This corner is the quiet side — the road and the town are across the water now, the campground sounds are a shore away, and this is where the wildlife actually happens.

Watch the sky over the lake. Osprey work Gull Lake all summer — you'll know one by the crooked-winged hover, then the feet-first crash into the water, and if it comes up with a trout it will shake itself like a dog in midair and carry the fish head-forward, like a torpedo, for aerodynamics. Bald eagles patrol through too, mostly early and late — and an eagle will happily mug an osprey for its catch rather than fish for itself, a habit Benjamin Franklin famously held against the species.

In the brush alongside: mule deer at dawn and dusk, and the whole understory rustles with chipmunks and golden-mantled ground squirrels — the ones that look like chipmunks that found a gym. Black bears do wander this basin, mostly interested in unattended coolers; make noise around blind corners and you'll never be surprised or surprising.

The path bends east along the north shore ahead — the home stretch.