It was pretty darn cold last night. The weather report said 34° ,and after seeing some of the evidence of the morning, I believe them. Despite the cold I slept well with my extra layers on. It didn’t take me too long to get rolling in the morning and I was out by 6:30 for a decent start.

There was no dew or frost where I was camped in the heavenly wooded area. My foot is a little sore this morning, but that’s normal when it’s cold like this. I’m wearing my gloves, beanie and neck buff and I warm up within 10 minutes of hiking. The neck buff is the first to come off as I begin to overheat. The cool air feels great on my neck.

After about 40 minutes of hiking I come to an obstacle that I had forgotten about. My goal last night was to make the last river crossing before morning so I wouldn’t have to do it on a chilly morning. And what lies directly ahead of me is another river to ford that is about 20 yards wide.

So I take off my shoes and socks and put my flip flops on and find a stick. As I make my way across the river the water is not as cold as I expected, which is a relief. But the water is far deeper than expected and that is not a relief. The water comes up to my knees in most places and only an inch from getting my pants wet. I definitely don’t want to walk this morning with wet pants.

I make it across safely to the other side but it is wet grass and still muddy so I have to keep going. It takes me nearly a quarter of a mile to find a log to sit on to put my shoes back on. Since it is cold it takes a while to dry my feet. It’s nearly impossible to put these hiking sucks on when your feet are wet.

But everything works out and I’m on my way. If I had made it this far last night I don’t see a whole lot of camping sites better than the one I had, so I think I made the right choice in stopping when I did.

The trail comes out to a lake with a boardwalk across the edge of it and what looks to be a channel between it and another lake. The ground here is covered in heavy frost so, yes, it probably did get down to about 34° last night. Possibly a little lower.

As I walk across the boardwalk it also is covered with frost and is very slippery. It is also unusually high -about 5 ft in the air. There is no railing or edges so it is a bit scary walking across this rickety thing that is swaying underneath me while I am walking on ice crystals. The wolves don’t seem to mind because they have dropped five mounds of scat right in the middle of the boardwalk.

I’m relieved when the trail comes out to a dirt road walk. At least now I know my feet will not get wet and I won’t have to be dodging rocks and roots for a while. But of course that doesn’t last for very long.

The trails all afternoon seem to follow the same formula. A little bit of evergreens, a little bit of Aspen underbrush mush, a little bit of wet buggy roots, a little bit of logging road, a wet grassy area next to a beaver pond, a ski trail or snowmobile trail, a logged out area of trash vegetation, a hike up an esker, and then a hike down and esker. I could use all of these to describe any two-mile stretch of trail along todays hike.

The morning remained cool, but I was never cold. When I came across the edge of wood Lake and the campground area, there was a bench in the Sun that was calling my name. I ate the second half of my sandwich from yesterday and the rest of the Pringles potato chips. I can’t relax too much today because, I have 28 miles from my campsite to get to town.

Cell service has been bad all day and I haven’t been able to get any connectivity to see if I can book a room in Rib Lake or not. There are two motels and a campground, so I’m not overly worried about it. But it would be nice to get the one that’s next to the Dollar General.

I have already had my morning coffee for the day, and so by 2:30 it’s time for the second one. It has been a while since my shoes have gotten wet from marsh or boggy grass and there is a bright sunny spot on a ski trail, so I lay down and bask in the sun with my shoes off to get my socks bone dry. A little coffee and a little sun could put me to sleep but I can only afford 15 minutes here.

I keep moving on and not more than 10 minutes later I come across another Beaver dam with a soaking wet field to cross behind it. There is a boardwalk in the middle but it only covers less than a quarter of the field I have to cross.

I am trying to be careful and step on either clumps of grass or logs, but eventually both feet end up sinking into water and getting both shoes and socks wet again. I just can’t win today.

About 5 miles from town, the trail crosses the highway and begins a new section which coincides with a trail called Tim’s Hill. There are quite a few cars here and I can see people scurrying up the trail.

I am running low on water, and the campsite here is supposed to have a hand pump. But with all the confusion of multiple trails, I totally go right past the campsite and my chance for water. I am completely out, but have half of a coffee left. I will need one liter to make it to town from here.

Luckily there is a stream just a few tenths up the trail so I stopped there to fill up. It is now 4:00 so the last 5 miles plus the mile and a half road walk into town should put me into town right at 6:00 p.m. and that would be perfect timing.

I am able to get a weak cell signal now and I’m able to book the very last room available. Yesterday when I checked there were three available. Talk about cutting it close.

This section of trail is through a ski club area and so there are a million ski trails criss-crossing every which way. But the trail has been recently cut and is in good shape. More importantly, I don’t remember seeing any significant muddy areas that didn’t have a bridge or a boardwalk over them. I finally catch a break for the last 5 miles.

I pop out to the road walk right on time at 5:30 and begin walking into town. I am finally able to get good cell signal here so I go ahead and check an entire day and a half worth of email and other miscellaneous things as I mindlessly walk along the road.

One of my emails is the hotel giving me the key code for my room and the room number. They don’t have an office on site so you just use a code to get into your room. It’s a cute little four unit motel and the rooms are very rustic log cabin styling.

I don’t even bother to shower before I turn right around and head to the Dollar General after checking my food to see what I need to buy for tomorrow. I need 3 days worth of food but I have some meals left over since I wasn’t sure if this was a two-day or a 3-day journey. I want to hit the Dollar General because I know they don’t open until 8:00 a.m. and I want to be sure I can leave before then.

Next order of business is dinner, and the pizza shop in town seems to have the best comments. I am wary of Midwestern pizza, but the pictures in Google show that they are slicing them in wedges instead of squares. I think this might be worth giving them a try. And I was not disappointed. It was the best pizza I have had in the state of Wisconsin hands down.

Back at the room, the next order of business is a shower, finally. The last two days have been relatively cool, so I’m not really that disgusting, but a shower always feels great. I am not even going to bother doing laundry since I have so little that is dirty.

The last order of business is checking the schedule to make sure I haven’t made any mistakes, because I will try to get my shoes sent to the next town which I should be hitting in exactly a week. The hotel in that Town requires a two-night minimum, so I will be staying at a bed and breakfast instead.

I will call them tomorrow later in the morning to make sure it is okay to have my shoes shipped there. If they will not let me ship my shoes there then the only place is one day before the end of the trip, so I will only be able to wear my new shoes for one day.

Emotion of the day, Monotony

The trails today were like the trails have been the entire last week or so. Other than having lunch at wood Lake, this could have been any of the previous 10 days.

The whole Wood Lake area was better than usual because they had informative signs talking about the logging industry of the area. I must be getting old because I love reading those kinds of signs especially ones that identify trees in the area.