Today is the same kind of morning as yesterday. Get up early, eat breakfast, and don’t lollygag. Breakfast one is granola. It was a local brand I had never heard of and is really good. I just eat it dry without any kind of milk.

In fact, I have thrown out all my milk powder. I have carried it over 1400 miles without eating any of it so why have I carried it so far? I did actually try some with my granola about a week ago and it only made it messier and added a bit of time to clean up my cold soak jar.

I carry an empty peanut butter jar to cold soaked foods I don’t want to cook but it can be a hassle because it’s difficult to clean. And if you don’t clean it regularly, it can get quite disgusting. That may be something that I ditch at some point, too. But I do really like eating cold Ramen out of it.

I was out of the campsite at 6:02, which is my earliest start yet. The campers next to me never made a peep all morning. They are still asleep.

This campground has many loops, and the Ice Age Trail is supposed to intersect it in two different spots. But I don’t want to risk having to double back if I don’t find the right trail that exits, so I decide to just backtrack where I entered the campground. It’s only an extra hundred yards.

The trail within the park is a little longer than I expected for the morning. It was closer to two miles when I was expecting only one. It doesn’t matter very much as I know once I hit the road I have less than a mile to the artesian spring. This is my primary target for the morning.

In the guidebook they say that locals the lineup to fill their water tanks. And that is an accurate statement as it is not even 7:00 a.m. and there is already a truck filling a tank in a trailer that they are pulling behind them. They leave just as I arrive and see the spring for the first time.

It’s an amazing sight. It’s a small mortared section of stones with a pipe coming out of the side of it. The pipe is open at the end but has two other pipes welded into it. One of the pipes is facing downward as a spout would be to fill containers with. The area of the ground is covered with metal grates because the amount of water that flows out of this thing is immense.

There is an entire little Park here with a picnic bench and a garbage can. There is a sign that says a man dug this well by hand in 1855. When he reached 55 ft the water started flowing and has not stopped ever since. The water tasted good but was not the most amazing water that I have ever tasted from a spring. But it was 12,000 times better than the water from the campground. So I dumped out both bottles, rinsed them well, and filled them both to the lid. I also cameled up by drinking as much as I could tolerate before refilling the bottle again. I should not have to refill for the rest of the day as it is only about 18 miles to the first town of Milton and the trail is a mix of road and paths.

I have about five or six miles of road walking before I hit the first section of trail. It is about 9:00 a.m. when I hit that section and I am sleepy again like I want to take a nap. I think I need to start introducing fat into my breakfast as granola is just two carb rich.

The other negative is that this trail section is grassy meadow and I am about to get my feet soaked because it is still too early in the day to have burned off the morning dew. After that, more road walking.

The roads before the trail were typical corn and soybean fields. The roads after the trail are a little more rural residential but there are still some Fields here and there. The shoulder is narrow but the traffic is light so it’s not too bad of a road walk. But most of the road is an exposed Sun so I am already lathered up and using the umbrella by 9:00 a.m. and end up using it most of the day.

At noon I am hungry, but I am still too hours away from the first town of Milton. There is a giant tree providing shade in the middle of the road so I just stopped there and eat my lunch.

I bought a French baguette that is not fully cooked that you are intended to take home and finish cooking to crisp up. This turns out to have been my favorite meal of the trip so far. I was originally going to make little sandwiches with summer sausage and cheese. But I am also carrying butter and olive oil so I’m using that on the bread and love it. More of this, please.

The road did end up having more shade later on, but it was still hot so I was still using the umbrella most of the time. I was expecting to enter the town of Milton on rail trails, but it was really just a sidewalks intermingled with some jogging paths. There was a Bonnie nursery as I entered town. They had many huge greenhouses which all seem to be full of dead plants. Most of them were 90% empty anyway.

My target was the Piggly Wiggly which was two blocks off the trail. And my mind for the last 2 hours has been set on ice cream because of the heat. So I bought a pint of vanilla ice cream and a Green Goddess juice. I went ahead and bought a small Powerade so I didn’t have to bother with getting any more water. The ice cream was quite refreshing. This is probably going to become a habit.

This town was larger than I expected, and took about 2 mi before the houses started to disappear. But the road walking transitioned into a dedicated trail but didn’t look like a rail trail. Two down, but six more to get to Janesville.

After about a half a mile and crossing another road it did become a rail trail with huge trees on both sides. It was a Forrest Gump moment but more importantly it provided shade for the afternoon. The shade only lasted about 2 miles as the rail trail gave way to road walking again. After another mile or so it was back to dedicated bike paths. This would be my last 3 miles to the interstate where the hotel was.

The bike paths went behind many people’s houses. At one house there were two ladies who called out to me “are you hiking the trail?” I spent about 5 minutes talking with them. They both enjoyed hiking the various sections nearby, mainly The Kettle Moraine I just finished. Neither of them could imagine spending 2 months hiking the entire thing. That is a common thing when you talk with locals who are even know what the Ice Age Trail is.

At last, I finally made it to the interstate at about 5:30. This is where I exit the trail and walk along the sidewalks under the interstate. There are many crosswalks and a lot of traffic so it takes a while to go the one mile to the hotel. It is a brand new Townplace suites. And it is in a major shopping district, so all the services I need should be nearby.

Near the hotel on the sidewalk along the interstate, I come across a hawk who has just caught a rabbit. He tries to fly away with the rabbit but can only make it about 10 or 15 yards before he has to land again. It is too heavy for him to fly any distance with, and he is not about to give it up to me. We spend a few minutes dancing around each other until I can get by him without forcing him to leave his dinner.

Shower is the first order of business, as usual, and dinner is the second. I have several choices but I decide on Mexican again. But this time I will just get a simple burrito so that I’m not too stuffed. I am not disappointed as the burrito is quite delicious. But unfortunately I am stuffed again. Third world problems.

The Hy-Vee grocery store is on the way back to the hotel so I decide to stop in and check their selection. And if it is raining tomorrow, I will not want to walk out into the rain just to get lunch so I will buy some kind of prepared lunch that here that I can warm up in the hotel room.

This Hy-Vee is a very impressive grocery store. It is huge and has an incredible selection. I choose an Asian meat skewer on lo mein for lunch tomorrow. They also have soft baguettes so I go ahead and buy one since I know this will be a staple of mine from now on.

Outside the grocery store is also impressive. Instead of typical curbside delivery they have a whole sequence of lanes that look like a bank drive-thru teller complex. You just pull into an empty lane and they cart out your groceries and load them into your car for you.

It begins to rain gently as I approach the hotel. I was carrying my umbrella with me the entire time just in case. Because before I left the hotel the weather app showed a gigantic front headed directly my way within the hour. I couldn’t have time today’s events anymore perfectly.

Emotion of the day, Elation

Other than being hot and tired, today was a perfect day. I woke up and got out on time this morning. I didn’t have to scrape too many slugs off the tent while packing. And the artesian well was better than I expected. Eating a pint of ice cream on a park bench was also a pleasure.

Lunch was delicious. Dinner was delicious. And I got to actually speak to humans today. Knowing that rain is coming and that I got everything done before it started also made me happy. The forecast now doesn’t show as much rain as they were predicting earlier in the week, but rain is rain and I will be indoors for most of it.

Good food, a hot shower, and missing rain are just one notch above good. One notch above good is elation.