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.