Month: September 2024

I got up early this morning, started going through my routine, and I still couldn’t get going before 6:20. This seems to be some sort of magical time that I just can’t beat. Today I decided if I go 30 miles or 38 miles for the day. Leaving 20 minutes late means there’s one mile less that I can do today.

I have been lucky lately with finding trees to camp under. Packing the tent up in the morning means it is only dirty but not wet. The hardest part about packing up is picking slugs off the tent before I roll it.

The trail is pretty hilly this morning. The coach at the snow park warned me that this was going to be an annoying little section. He was right but it’s only about a half a mile of annoying ups and downs. There are far more lakes than it looked like on the map. And they have to take us by every single one of them.

Within the first 2 hours of the morning all of the trail sections are done for the day. My first Target is the town of Rosholt. It is just over 10 miles from where I can’t and has a Dollar General and might have some open restaurants.

The roads are pretty desolate and it is not bad hiking. At the town of Alden I am turning West to go into Rosholt, instead of continuing North. After going to town I will turn north and rejoin the suggested route that is it is making its way west.

The road into town is busy but there is four foot of paved shoulder and 2 ft of gravel beyond that. Within a mile it changes to a sidewalk all the way through town. I like sidewalks.

I first come to a gas station and need to rest a little bit. I sit outside and take my shoes and socks off to let my feet dry from the morning dew. There is no point in going in the store. Anything I need to buy in there I can buy at the Dollar General for half the price.

There is one restaurant in town called Granny’s place that is open. I head there and see that they are feeding the football team out behind the building. Inside the building there are only one or two tables occupied. I order a breakfast skillet and it hits the spot.

I keep walking through town to go to the Dollar General at the other end. I buy some granola bars, beef jerky, and some chips for the walk today. I also decide to try the frozen dinner thing again so I buy another Michelina’s. I also buy a pint of ice cream which gets consumed quickly.

Now I am back to road walking. As soon as I turn north I will be on the same road that the official route merges into. The scary part is that I will be on the same road for 4 hours. For solid hours, no turns, no bins, no change.

This road ends up putting me to sleep. So the solution for that is coffee of course. The Dollar General did not have anything convenient so I make another Cafe Bustelo. I will need to count how many I have left to make sure I don’t run out before the end of the trail.

I have pretty good cell service so I go ahead and check to see if the hotel I want in Antigo is still booked on the day I need. And just my luck they now have an availability.

Now is decision time. If I still want to try and do 38 miles today I can get the room a day earlier for a cheaper rate. But looking at how far I have left to go I don’t think it is possible for me to do 38 miles before dark. Sticking to the original schedule would still make for a 30 mi day. And it looks like I only have time for about 34 miles today.

So the decision is made. Book The room for Saturday and stick to the original schedule. I remember that I have a free night certificate so I am able to use that and not burn up 40,000 points on one room. That makes me happy. Today is looking better.

Or at least today would look better if I didn’t have to still look at this same road for another hour. I really want to get off this road.

Looking at the weather forecast it has changed just a little bit. Instead of just raining all night, it looks like it’s going to rain around 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. and then midnight onward. I doubt I can make the campsite before the rain starts.

And that is exactly what happens. I am a mile and a half in the campsite which is 30 minutes of hiking when the rain begins. I don’t want everything to be soaking wet because my pack is part of my pillow system. Rain at the end of the day is never fun.

But I got lucky this time. As I am wrapping my rain jacket around the pack to keep it dry I noticed that there looks like a restaurant up ahead. I quickly hike there and see that it is indeed a restaurant that wasn’t listed on the map. They have an awning on the side of their building so it looks like a great place to wait out the rain. It’s not supposed to last more than an hour.

But since it is 6:00 anyway I decide to go ahead and eat dinner here. It was a good choice, because I am able to charge my phone and battery bank. And in addition the rain stops about 20 minutes before I leave. Perfect timing.

This last road has been a four mile chunk on a busy highway. It is full of traffic of people coming home from work. But I only have a little over a mile left from the restaurant. The bad part is the shoulders are now soaking wet. So I have to stop and carefully walk down the shoulder about every minute for another car. It is the most annoying mile of the day.

I finally get to the trail section. It is less than a mile of trail but it has a designated campsite. The bad part is the map shows this to be swamp. I hope there will be dry camping under trees and not in grass.

I do see swampy areas around me, but the trail is high and dry among pine trees. This is exactly what I’m looking for. The designated site doesn’t really have flat camping areas. So I get a little creative and pitch my tent on the side of the approach trail. I will have some protection from the rain tonight.

Since I just ate dinner at a restaurant I don’t have to do any cooking tonight. Once everything is set up it is go straight to blogging. The cell signal is not great but it’s good enough to get the text going. But the images are a bit slow and sometimes through errors. But I have a freshly charged phone so what’s with retrying them so I don’t have to do it later.

That has been one thing I enjoy about doing this blog. and because I forced myself to write the blog every single day, I won’t fall behind and end up quitting the blog. Even if I have no cell signal I will dictate to an email and just paste the email at some future date. Pictures are harder and take about 25% of the total time it takes to write one of these blogs. But typically they take about an hour as long as the cell signal is good.

Emotion of the day, Relief

This trail is not like most hiking trails. On a trail like the AT or the PCT, I basically just figure out how many miles per day I want to go and I go that many miles plus or minus a few. There will usually be campsites nearby or I can just stealth camp in many situations.

But with this Trail the road walks dictate when you can stop. It makes it much harder to set a schedule and nearly impossible to alter it. That’s the situation I was in trying to book a room in Antigo.

based on the distances I can go in a day, I only have a very few set of options. In this 5-day stretch of trail there are only seven places to camp. That doesn’t give you a lot of options.

So with the Labor Day weekend looking up the one hotel I needed on the one day I needed it, this has been a nightmare section logistically.

I have been checking availability every day in the hopes that a cancellation would open up a room. I got very lucky today. I know I have a room booked. I don’t have to blast out a 38 mile burner. Or I don’t have to figure out how to slow down for a full day.

I got what I needed on the day that I need it and that is a huge relief.

I slept really well last night. It was probably the best night of sleep on the entire trip so far. I woke up at 5:00 so I started reorganizing and packing things early. I still have not gone through my food bag to see if I need food or not. If I do need more food then I have to wait till 8:30 for Aldi to open. That means I will probably not get to start hiking until 9:30 or possibly later.

Breakfast at the hotel is probably the worst of the trip so far. It is either Cheerios or Raisin Bran cereal and bagels. No protein whatsoever. And the orange juice machine shoots out water that isn’t even colored orange. The coffee machine is not any better. It ends up shooting out something that looks weaker than iced tea. It has a faint coffee flavor but that’s about it.

After going through my food bag and reorganizing everything, I figured out that I don’t really need to buy any more food. But the Subway next door opens in about 5 minutes, so that would be something delicious to pack out for lunch. So I go grab a sub and wrap it tightly and put it next to my umbrella.

I tried Uber and Lyft again just to see if by chance they have drivers that work the morning just not the evenings. No such luck, but the taxi is now open because it is after 8:00. I call for the taxi and by the time I get my pack and go to the front, he is already there. Way faster service than last night.

I am at the trailhead and hiking before 8:30. This is far earlier than I was expecting to be able to get out of this town and that is a good thing.

The first few miles are all walking in grassy areas adjacent to fields.I purposely wanted my damp socks on because I knew I was going to get wet this morning. I am not soaking wet, but my feet are definitely far from dry.

The morning is a mix of 2 miles of road 2 miles of trail 2 miles of road, etc.. On the second or third roadwalk I can see two walkers way ahead in the distance. By the time we are close enough to see each other, they are indeed hikers because they have backpacks and trekking poles.

It turns out they are The Honeymoon Hikers. They hiked the AT for their honeymoon several years ago. They have hiked many different trails including the Mountains to Sea trail which they said had the worst road walks they ever experienced. They have also thru hiked to the Appalachian trail four times.

We exchange emails because they have a complete list of all the trail Angels for all chapters. I only have the ones at the beginning in the end for getting shuttles to and from the trail. The list is massive and it will take a long time to sift through what I actually need. The hardest part is figuring out what section I am actually in at any given time.

They tell me the rest of the trail westward is quite desolate and they needed to rely on the trail angels quite frequently. They also said the trail is pretty wet in many places. I reciprocate on intel on the eastern side. After the 15 minute chat we part ways and they let me know of another hiker a day behind them named Eric.

I continue my road walk to the last trail section before it turns into a longer 10 plus mile road walk. It is 11:00 by the time I am just about done with the last trail section so I go ahead and stop and eat the first half of my sandwich. It is good, but not scrumptious.

By noon I am on the major road walk for the day. The roads all morning have been very desolate with only one car per hour in most cases. There are only two short sections on busy highways, but they pass by quickly.

I end up at a small bridge over a creek when it is time for the second half of the sandwich at 2:00. There is a concrete railing and it makes a great sitting spot to eat and take my shoes and socks off and let my feet dry.

My shoes are dry enough but the socks are still damp. I change into my dirty but dry socks hanging from the back of the pack before I leave.

I go ahead and mix my coffee, but I don’t drink it until 2:30. It is a Cafe Bustello plus a sugar packet. I am still amazed at how little time needs to elapse after drinking coffee and sugar before my energy level increases. 10 minutes is all it takes in most cases.

The weather all day has been divine. The temperature in the afternoon is almost identical to the temperature in the morning. There has been very heavy cloud cover all day, and I haven’t even seen the sun. This is perfect because the temperature probably never peaks above 72 or 73°. I only break a sweat on steep uphill sections. Most of the time I am cool and only barely clammy.

The big roadwalk section ends at a snow park. When I arrive it is full of 20 or 30 kids doing some sort of exercises. The leader of the group talks to me for 20 minutes or so and tells me about the various features in the snowpark that are available to Ice Age Trail hikers. The main thing I am interested in is a water. I started from the hotel with two and a half liters and I still have a half a liter. I have hiked 23 miles and only drink two liters of water. That’s how cool it is today. And that also included making coffee.

After I get my water bottles filled, the caretaker drives around and it’s time to chat with him. I chat with him for at least 30 minutes. He tells me some of the history of the park and how he had to convince the snow park to solicit the IAT to bring the trail into the park 30 years ago. We talked about all sorts of topics – the space shuttle, real estate, IT technology, and of course hiking and skiing.

Other than water and electrical outlets, the main attraction for IAT hikers is the shelter one mile up the trail. It has electrical lights and outlets. I will go check it out, but I’m planning on trying to go a little further.

I have spent an hour talking to people so far, but there’s still plenty of daylight left. When I get to the shelter there is another hiker with his hammock strung up inside of it. The Honeymooners said there is another hiker named Eric behind them and this is indeed Eric. In fact he already knows my name so that Honeymooners have let him know about me heading his direction.

Eric and I spend at least another half hour talking. He was considering hiking the Florida Trail so we talk about that for much of the time and how it is both similar and different to the Ice Age trail.

It is now close to 7:30 and I only have about 1 hour of daylight left. I was trying to go three more miles but it’ll probably be closer to two. I need to make sure I can get to an area that isn’t private property so that I can camp.

I am hiking it a really fast pace at this point. I tend to do that late at night just from the adrenaline. But I am so well rested from my three long conversations that I’m cool and don’t want to work up a sweat. I tried my best to slow down but it is nearly impossible. My body just wants to hike fast.

By the time I find my camping spot I have worked up a little bit of a sweat. So after I set up my tent I immediately go find a big rock to start cooking dinner on. It is essentially dark now, and I only need the flashlight for very delicate things. Most of my cooking I can just do in the dark.

I am trying to spend as much time as possible outside of the tent to cool down before jumping in. There are a few mosquitoes but not too many. At least not enough to drive me into the tent.

I only have mashed potatoes for dinner and I am still trying to perfect making the potatoes in the same bag they come in. When you pour two cups of water into it, there is only a half an inch of room at the top of the bag so you have to stir carefully. You also have to stir thoroughly because all the special flavorings are at the bottom of the pack. This is Wisconsin cheese potatoes and I don’t want a lot of cheese dust at the end of my meal. Even though I think I have done a good job of thoroughly stirring the potatoes I discover towards the end that I indeed have big chunks of dry cheese wads.

I still need more practice on this particular cooking technique. I don’t want to cook the potatoes in the pot because I don’t want to have to clean the pot. I am in Bear country and I don’t want to have to hang everything I own in the trees at night. As long as I only boil water in my stove pot I won’t have to worry about it attracting bears.

Emotion of the day, Happiness

Today was a really good day of hiking. Even though it was a late start it was an hour earlier than I was expecting. That definitely made me happy and set the mood for the rest of the day.

The thick clouds kept all of the heat of the sun away. And yet it never once felt like it might possibly rain. The weather today couldn’t have been more perfect and that also made me happy.

And discovering that I had enough food to make my next stop without buying anything else also made me happy. Buying the sub to pack out was just icing on the cake and something else to bring happiness and joy to the day.

Seeing three more hikers and having good conversations with them also made me happy. Talking to the two men at the snow park was also fun. I had nearly two hours of breaks just talking with people, started 2 hours later than usual, and I still managed 26 or 27 miles.

The weather forecast for tomorrow has also changed from being hot to being low 70’s almost identical to today. Tomorrow will be at least 30 miles so that is really good news.

How can I not be happy about how today turned out?

After a hot day like yesterday any amount of rain is welcome. Even the amount where your pants to shoes are soaking wet for 2 hours, and your shoes never dry all day.

I woke up at a normal time but I had a headache and a little bit of nausea. My caffeine consumption yesterday was too late. Detouring to that campground messed that part up.

I am unable to eat more than one bite of granola. I will just have to eat breakfast along the trail as I walk. The headache isn’t actually too bad but it’s just annoying.

While I woke up at a normal time it took me much longer to pack up. It probably took me an hour and a half to get out of camp.

It rain pretty heavily during the night. But before the rain came it was extremely windy. I thought the wind was actually going to collapse my tent. But all it did was loosen some of the guidelines so it was a little more floppy than usual. But everything inside State dry, and the only evidence that I was there was a dry patch on the ground.

The trail was what you expect of an area going through private property. It was a mix of fields, pine groves, hardwood hammocks, all snaking around planted fields and intersecting millions of other trails. After about 4 MI of this it finally deposited me on a road. I will be road walking until mid-afternoon.

As soon as I get out into the open I can see but the clouds are brewing thick and black. The weather pattern is here seem to have the rain coming from the northwest. And the entire north-south and West skies are black. I know what is coming I just don’t know when.

I walked for nearly an hour on the roads before it started to rain. It rained consistently for around 30 to 40 minutes. The rain was heavy enough that within 10 minutes my pants were soaked. My shoes were soaked within 1 minute. I hike with an umbrella as my primary rain protection. It was too hot and not worth trying to put a raincoat on.

About 5 minutes after it started raining, I could see someone walking on the road towards me. As he got closer I could tell it was another hiker. When we met, I found out his name is Randy and he is Yo-Yo hiking this trail. Yo yo just means you hike the entire trail in one direction, and then turn around and hike it again the other direction. Bless his heart.

After our 2 minute conversation, we both keep walking in our particular directions. My first confirmed through hiker sighting and I am over halfway done with this trail. Maybe I will see one more before the end.

About 30 minutes after the rain stopped, I came to an intersection with a bar and grill that is friendly to hikers. The timing was perfect that I arrived at 11:00. What is not perfect is that they don’t open till 12:00. They have two chairs out front so I go ahead and take my shoes and socks off and wring out my socks as best I can. I put on my flip-flops while my shoes and socks dry.

I wring out everything else I can that is soaking wet. I had a pair of socks on the back of my pack that I should have put inside my pack before it rained. Now I have two pairs of white socks. I was also drying a shirt on top of the back which I knew would get soaked. I just consider this a pre-wash cuz it was a dirty shirt anyway. But it is now holding a significant amount of water that I need to wring out.

By the time I finish all of this, the owner drives up and says she’ll open up in a couple of minutes. So they opened up at 11:20 after all, just for me.

The only thing on the menu here at Raisin’ Cane’s is pizza. So pepperoni and sausage pizza it is. It’s the typical Midwest cracker pizza but it is pretty good. I eat all the one slice and grab a Pepsi to go. This will be my afternoon coffee.

I managed to water up, pack up, and head out by 12:30. This is actually earlier that I was expecting. I will be road walking for the next two and a half hours.

Only 30 minutes after leaving the bar, I am getting very sleepy. It is to the point where I actually want to just lay down on the road and go to sleep. It is too early for the Pepsi but it is actually hard to keep my eyes open. I drag on for another 45 minutes but finally have to drink the Pepsi at 1:45. It took about 30 minutes for me to stop feeling drowsy, but it worked.

The entire six or seven hours of road walking today was on extremely remote roads, except for one quarter mile stretch. Other than that quarter mile I don’t think I saw more than a dozen cars.

The road walking finally ended as I reached Hartman Creek State Park. The trail was a mix of meadows and hardwood forests. There were a million other trails intersecting the main trail here, many of them mountain bike trails. I didn’t bother taking any of the side trails to the campground area as I was only an hour from my ending point.

The ending point I am shooting for is highway 54 that leads into the town of Waupaca. After the hot days my clothes are pretty ripe. There is an econo Lodge in town that I can get on points. If I am able to get an Uber into town I will go ahead and book it.

It is just after 5:30 by the time I reach the parking area at the highway. That one Pepsi really did its job. I check Uber and Lyft at the same time to see if they have any drivers. After 15 minutes neither service located driver so I check Google maps to see if there is a taxi in town. Google says there are two taxis in town so I call one to arrange for a ride. With the ride secured I go ahead and book the room.

It takes almost 30 minutes for the taxi to show up. I enjoy talking to the taxi driver on the short ride into town. It would have been a 5.6 mile walk and that would have been a make or break deal for going into town. But how can you pass up a free room and laundry.

When I get to the hotel I find out that they don’t have guest laundry. Who has an indoor pool but no guest laundry? Econo Lodge, that’s who. Looks like a soap and shampoo laundry again.

After I shower I do laundry immediately. My clothes will need all the time they can get to dry in the air conditioning. Next up is dinner’s across the street at Culver’s, then shopping at Aldi. But unfortunately Aldi is closed by the time I get there.

I will assess the food I have left back at the room to see if I should wait for Aldi to open at 8:30 or just wing it. I have 25 miles to go tomorrow and getting a late start at 9:30 might make that a miserable day. But luckily it’s supposed to be very cool temperatures.

Emotion of the day, Relief

It was a day of multiple reliefs. My headache went away sometime in the late morning I’m not sure exactly when. You always know when one starts but it’s hard to tell when one stops.

The rain was a very welcome relief, too. It was so cool and refreshing that I thoroughly enjoyed it. It wasn’t until after 2:00 p.m. that the sun came out and warmed things up a little bit, but I was mostly in wooded areas in the umbrella did the trick so I was never hot and miserable at all during the day.

It was a relief knowing that I didn’t have to wait a full hour for the restaurant to open. The 20 minutes it took was the time I needed to get all my clothes run out so there was no time lost at all.

It was a relief that maybe 15 miles of road walking had hardly any cars on it. And it was a relief knowing that there’s at least one other person out here through hiking this trail.

And it was a relief knowing that I was able to get a ride into town and do laundry even if I had to do it in a sink. It wasn’t the best day I’ve ever had in my life but it was a pretty good one.

It was definitely hot today. The only forecast I could get said it was supposed to be 92 but they were measuring only 89. It felt hotter than 90.

Even in the morning it wasn’t exactly cool but at least it was bearable. I can’t even get in the sleeping bag at night it’s so warm. I did manage to stop sweating around midnight though.

I got a later start and didn’t actually start hiking until after 7:00 I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to hike full speed today with the heat but at least right now it’s partially overcast skies so it’s not too hot yet. The weather app says it’s 78 but I think it’s hotter than that already.

The first few hours of the morning are mostly trail hiking with just short road walks to connect them together. The first excitement of the day is hiking through the small town of Richland. They have one bar but it is far too early for it to be open.

But even cooler than that I saw two Amish buggies on the way into town. The first one was an enclosed type that you normally think of with the whole family inside. The second one was an open garage with two girls driving it. Both buggies were friendly and waved back.

I’ve been seeing bizarre scratches on the road surface for the last few days and was wondering what caused it. I thought maybe it had to do with snowmobiles or some kind of winter thing around here. But nope I’m pretty sure it’s horse hooves scratching the pavement. I learned something new today.

After leaving the town the trail follows a creek. I had already filled up at the creek that was only an hour after where I camped so I was full. I also took the opportunity to wash the shirt I was wearing yesterday so I can use it for tomorrow. It has been hanging on the back of my pack drying as I walked down the road.

There weren’t too many meadows to walk through so my feet have stayed dry all morning. But by 9:00 the heat and the humidity have me completely drenched. It feels like noon. Luckily I am in woods for most of the walk but I still have to use my umbrella even in the woods to shade me from the sun that peaks through.

I took my lunch break on some really nice benches at a distributed campsite. A section hiker came walking by and asked if I was through hiking. We talked for about 10 minutes and then she moved on in the opposite direction. This is the first bonafide section hiker I have seen in at least a week. I still haven’t seen any others hikers that I could identify. I’ve only seen five people that head backpacks on period.

The place where I am to stop at for water this afternoon doesn’t look promising by the comments in the guidebook. It sounds like a swampy mess. I find a campsite only a mile off the trail and decide I will go there to try and get some snacks and water.

By the time I leave the official trail to go to the campground I have about 1 liter of water left. That means I have used two and a half liters since 8:00 this morning. This campground will be the last water that I am able to get until lunch time tomorrow. I will need to fill up everybody having potentially even buy another one.

When I get to the campground and go to the store, assign on the door says it is only open Friday Saturday and Sunday. Oh crap today is Monday. I will see the campground in the direction to return to the trail and find a picnic table near an outlet and a water spigot. I fill all my bottles there and begin charging my phone and battery. I drink as much water as I can tolerate and keep refilling the bottle. I want to make sure I am retaining as much water as possible before I leave this place.

It is only a few miles from where I intended to get water at the lake. I am curious to see how good of a source it would have been. When I get there it is what I expect. It is a lake that has a muddy shore. It has plenty of water that probably tastes like dirt. And it would require waiting out 20 or 30 ft for it to be deep and clear enough to collect. I am glad I went to the campground despite them being closed.

I have only about two more road miles before a long section of trail where I intend to camp. Judging from the satellite view I have a place in mind it’s about a mile and a half from the trailhead, but I have four miles of trail to pick from.

Just before I get to the trailhead, I woke by a house where the lady has just come out to get her mail. She asks if I need any water. I have only drank a half a liter but I will definitely accept any offer of water. So I drink the rest of the partially filled bottle and give it to her to refill. Now I just managed to help the net effect of one extra leader of water. I will feel my comfortable for tomorrow’s hike.

When I get into the trail section, I can hear the voices and hollers of kids only a few tents of a mile behind me. There is no sense in even looking for a campsite until I am certain that they are no longer anywhere around. There are several good ones that I could have picked but I keep going.

By the time I get to the spot that I had scouted on the satellite view, the kids voices are nowhere to be heard. Now to start looking for a spot. This area seems okay. It is not real flat and the vegetation is a bit thick so I keep moving on.

I get to a section of woods that I know is the last woods before I will be entering a large meadow. This would be an ideal spot to stop. On the right side or pine trees {space} why depart and without any undergrove but the ground is a little too sloped. On the other side there is level ground but there is a little more vegetation.

I dropped my pack at a place that looks decent and decide to go see the edge of the meadow to see if I can see anything further down the trail. That was a good move because right at the edge of the meadow is a bench overlooking to meadow. And there is an even better spot only 20 feet away from it. So I go back and grab my pack and move it to the new spot.

I set up the tent first and then get my cooking gear and go to the bench to start cooking. Tonight it will be my last dehydrated meal of chicken and dumplings. I have some Irish butter and partially that I can add to it to jazz it up. Other than the chicken being a little tough it was actually really good.

I look over the maps for tomorrow’s hiking section. My schedule says that I’m supposed to take an Uber into a town five miles away to get a free hotel. The town only has 6,000 people so I’m not sure they will have Uber service. It’s 25 mi to that spot on the highway which is close to the distance that I did today. If I reserve a room and there’s no Uber service it is going to be a very miserable 5-mile March into town. It will be an equally unpleasant March back out from town the following morning.

I should be passing a small town with a bar and grill for a late lunch tomorrow. If I get there in time and have enough daylight to potentially make the 5-mile road walk I will go ahead and book the room tomorrow. I will let the weather and my water tell me what to do tomorrow.

Emotion of the day, Disappointed

Seeing the Amish buggies was not a disappointment, that was a bonus. But the heat was certainly disappointing.

Comments on one of the views in the guidebook said That the view was the most impressive at least going eastward. Going Westward it was hardly even memorable. I can think of a half a dozen views already that were better than this one. Maybe that means the Western half of the trail is going to be really boring. That would be disappointing.

It was disappointing to see that the lake I planned to filter water from would have been a difficult place to get water from. It was doubly disappointing to walk a mile off trail and a mile back to go to a campground that was closed for the next 4 days. But at least I was able to get some water, even if it was iron tasting water.

The bar for lunch in the hotel at the end of the day would suggest that tomorrow would be anything but disappointing. So if tomorrow ends up being disappointing then I will be whatever emotion goes way beyond disappointment. Hopefully you’re not all the way to anger. It’s too hot to be angry.

I made one mistake last night while setting up my tent. It was before dark and the security lights hadn’t come on yet. But as it got later I discovered that security light was shining right in my tent. I tried to cover my eyes but it was too bright. So at about 10:00 p.m. I got out of my tent and shifted it to point the other way. After that modification I slept well.

I was up and out by 6:30 which was about what I was hoping for. I was able to exit the back end of the park which led me directly to the road I needed to be on to leave town. The first road was a busy county highway but I was only on it a little over a mile.

The next eight miles would be barely traveled back roads. In fact the entire eight miles I counted only 12 cars. The last mile into Westfield was just the opposite. It was heavily trafficked with a car about every 10 or 15 seconds. I stayed in the weeds the entire time.

I was dragging a bit this morning so I went ahead and drank the coffee drink I bought the campground at about 9:00. It was a Snickers cold brew and it really did taste like a Snickers. My breakfast this morning had a lot of sugary things. And I think I can detect a pattern that the more sugar I have in the morning The more I will crash and get sleepy within a few hours. Eating more sugary things when sleepy doesn’t help, either. Eating fatty things does. I will have to be more selective about my breakfast choices from now on.

The only plus to Westfield is the many convenience stores and fast food. I decided to try Arby’s. I don’t think I’ve been to an Arby’s in 20 or 30 years. I was surprised by their menu. They have quite a wide variety of choices. I got a Greek gyro wrap and a jamoka shake. They had outlets to charge your devices but I wasn’t there long enough to get more than about 10% on my phone.

One of the other customers in the restaurant recognized me hiking in to town and asked about my hike. He was aware of the Ice Age trail but didn’t realize it covered the entire state. He also didn’t realize it had so much road walking.

I bought a new Gatorade before leaving town but forgot to buy a coffee drink. I realized my error about a mile out of town but it wasn’t worth going back. I can make instant coffee after all. I just want to conserve my water as much as possible since this is a long road stretch without any water sources.

The afternoon road walk is almost as desolate as the morning except for maybe a mile on one busy county road. The morning was not too hot. It was mostly overcast and there was a decent breeze. But now the afternoon has very few clouds and the sun is out in a vengeance. The forecast said it was supposed to be 88° today and I believe them.

I am getting tired again around 2:00 which is normal. I put my coffee and sugar in the remainder of my water bottle and hike another 30 minutes to let it mix itself. I took a little break on the side of the road to drink the coffee and it definitely gave me the energy I needed for the rest of the afternoon.

I finally hit the park which marks the end of the bifurcation exactly on time at 5:00. Since I left Devil’s Lake State Park a few days ago, I have been hiking the Eastern route and now I finally met back up with the Western route. We have rejoined.

The park itself is not much to look at. There is a kiosk and a bench and a post with a blaze on it leading out into a meadow. I stopped for about 15 minutes and have a pre-dinner break. I ate some dry salami and some buttered bread and a few cookies.

I have just enough water to make the last five miles to the next water source where I think I’m going to be camping near the interstate. I have a Gatorade which is my margin of error if I end up stopping before the water source. I will have to cook with my water and drink the Gatorade with dinner Then I will camel up like crazy in the morning because tomorrow is supposed to be the hottest day of the entire hike.

My plan B was to try and stealth camp in this park if I didn’t have the energy to make it to the interstate. The North end of the Park has a set of woods that have absolutely perfect stealth sites. If it were later in the day, I probably would have stopped here. But it is only 5:30 so I can make my intended stop well before dark.

After leaving the park, the trail skirts along a nice lake. There are lake houses lining every square foot of the shoreline. But there is one public beach access section, but it is jam-packed full of people occupying every seat at every picnic bench. They have a pit toilet but no running water. If I want to get water from here it will have to be from the lake. And there are two many people swimming in the lake for me to want to drink from it right now. I will just have to go to my planned stopping point to get water.

The remaining 4 miles of road walk isn’t too bad. The shoulder is decent but there a lot of cars the first mile. After that it thinned out considerably.

The road walk just ends at a dead end where the trail head begins. It’s only a short distance to the intersection between the trail crossing the highway and the side trail going to the rest area. I don’t really need anything at the rest area so I just head on down the trail.

When I get to the culvert that goes under the highway, it has a stream running through it. There is an arrow pointing into the culvert meaning we are supposed to walk down the ditch inside the culvert. I’m not quite up to that now. I read comments in the trail guide saying people walked to the rest area then walked back up the exit ramp for it to cross the road instead of going through the culvert. So I go back to the trail junction and go to the rest area facilities.

They have an ice cold bottle filling station so I go ahead and fill all my bottles and camel up right there in the air conditioning. I don’t really need to use the restroom and I don’t really need anything from the vending machines. But the cold water and air conditioning is very nice.

The walk back the exit ramp is very brisk. Pedestrians are not allowed on interstates so what I’m doing is not exactly legal. But I make it to the point where the road crosses the river and head down to the other side of the culvert. I have to cross a fence and then scale down a steep incline to get to where the trail is. The fence is very beat up so you can tell a ton of people have been doing this.

When I finally get down there I see that there was a concrete walkway on the side of the culvert. So this entire little exercise was for nothing, other than to get fresh clean cold water.

By now it is 8:00 and the sun is down and it is starting to get dark. I need to make enough distance between me and the interstate so that I will be able to sleep. And I only have about 20 minutes of light left.

I find a perfect spot which is still in the state owned land, so I make camp as quickly as I can. I lose the foot of the tent pole in the weeds and it takes me nearly 10 minutes to find it. I had to pull out my flashlight to find it. It had fallen underneath the tent so that’s why it was so hard to find.

The mosquitoes are not too bad but the routine is to get inside of the tent as quickly as possible. But the problem is I’m still hot and sweating from the exertion to get here. It would be better to hang out outside the tent for at least 30 minutes to cool off.

But I changed into my sleeping clothes anyway and they are swampy within a few minutes. I will have to dry them out tomorrow afternoon. Over an hour later I am still sweating.

Emotion of the day, foolish

Emotion of the day, Foolish

After an entire day of boring road walking with the only excitement being eating a gyro, the end of the day’s excitement sure picked up.

The trail leading down to the culvert running under the interstate was very muddy. I didn’t get close enough to see that there was a concrete walkway and I’m not sure I could have gotten to it without getting sopping wet anyway.

But after detouring over a mile to go to the rest area and back only to find that there was a walkway made me feel very foolish. I wasted a half an hour of daylight.

I could see tons of tracks leading down the embankment from the highway and the fence was in pretty bad shape so I know I am not the only fool out here in the woods.