The temperature was great last night. I was snug as a bug in my base layers and sleeping bag. It seemed a little warmish when I woke up, so it was easy to pack up and head out by 6:30.

Since I am camped by a lake, my concern is that the trail will be swampy in the morning. But to my surprise the trail is high and dry and seems to find every esker in the area. In fact one of them is even named Hemlock Esker.

I am not pushing today since I know I will have to stealth camp before the big road walk for tomorrow. So my aim is to take as many breaks as I need, and try and enjoy just hiking in the woods.

I am in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, and it’s not clear who maintains these trails. Their markings are either a yellow rectangle blaze like I am used to, or a yellow diamond, or sometimes a white diamond with or without some yellow spray paint on it. I don’t get lost at any point but many intersections I definitely have to scrutinize and look very hard to figure out which direction to go. The featured image on yesterday’s post was an example of the yellow diamonds.

I stopped for lunch at a campsite on Jerry Lake that has a bench. I enjoy my now thoroughly thawed frozen Michelina’s dinner that I packed out yesterday.

As I am finishing lunch I see three ladies walk by who appear to be section hiking because they are commenting that they are almost home. I am almost home, too, but on a totally different scale than what they are probably talking about.

The name of the game for the trails today is esker, marsh, lake. Rinse and repeat. The afternoon doesn’t have nearly as much swampy trail, so it is nicer. I meet two more section hikers in the afternoon and they let me know that the end of the section before the road walk is pretty swampy. Since I will have a short day tomorrow I think I will camp before I was planning to if it is going to be swampy there.

The picture above shows the mess that calls for a creek crossing in some of these muddy areas. Pick a log and hope it doesn’t roll. This is the kind of thing I was exiting yesterday when I slipped and fell in the mud just as I was jumping off the last log.

I heard wolves last night right after dark and now I am seeing evidence of them in the mud. Maybe they heard there’s big fat rabbits in Minnesota so they’re hiking this trail too.

I drink the rest of my coffee at 4:30 and fill up my water from a decent stream. The water is cold but it is still tannic and brown.

By 5:00 I start keeping my eye out for some decent campsites. It feels so weird stopping this early in the day but there’s no point in going any further. The map shows the elevation only getting lower and the swamp symbols getting closer to the trail.

I find a spot where the trail descends ridge but the ridge keeps going and has hardwoods, evergreens, and low fern ground cover. Within 5 minutes I find a good place to camp so I go ahead and pitch the tent.

There is a swampy area nearby, so the mosquitos are pretty bad. I threw the entire pack in the tent and then jump in before the mosquitoes can follow me. Five or six manage to follow me into the tent, so I spend the next five minutes playing whack a bug.

Dinner will be cooked just outside of the tent and I will have to keep myself entertained for the next 3 hours without using much phone battery. I can probably listen to some music while not cooking. Blogging is done as quickly as possible.

Emotion of the day, Relaxed

Once I decided that I would modify the road walk and go north through Gilman instead of south through Lublin, it shortened the road walk significantly. The pressure to get to the beginning of the road walk was off.

I had some cell signal in the morning and was able to get my email at 9:30 which included a confirmation from the shoe store that they would get the shoes shipped out today.

I was able to take long breaks, and I was able to chat with other hikers throughout the day. The last two days have had plenty of people to talk to. Today was just a walk in the woods.