Wandering Mindfully

Curt officially broke the curse!  After today, he has successfully hiked three straight days with us on a long trail.  Well done, Curt!

Day 3 of IAT had a pretty good mix of landscapes for the viewing and terrain for the hiking.  We started our day finishing the last four miles of flatland that is the Gandy Dancer.  Curt, Brianna & I hit the trail while Shauna and Rick let their bodies have a day off.  As it turns out, Shauna wants to hike some normal days and camp in the forest with us after Penny and Curt head back to Michigan.

A Wisconsin Interagency truck was driving down the Gandy Dancer as we neared the end of that stretch.  The guy driving the truck stopped to say hello, explained that his job is to drive down the Gandy periodically and do trail maintenance on fallen trees or whatever else might pop up.  We explained our hiking plan, he wished us luck and we went back to the walking.

Trail after exiting the Gandy was back into the woods we are used to.  With the deep woods come the bugs, even on cool days like today.  2020 taught me to wear a buff around my neck for emergency face mask purposes.  Since then, I wear them for bug control when hiking and sun protection around my neck while doing yard work.  I had to pull my blue NCT buff around my face more than once to reduce the amount of exposed skin the flies would have to attack.

We walked by cornfields and ccc pine trees, by beautiful Straight Lake Dam and dozens of Garter snakes, up some steep inclines and over many marshy boardwalks.

IAT advertises June/July/August as the worst months to hike the trail.  Ticks, black flies, mosquitoes, the whole nine yards.  Brianna found a tick yesterday but our weather has been accommodating and we’ve got no complaints… yet.  All of the cracking black soil and man made board walks over dried up marshes reminded me of the perils related to hiking during the wet Spring and Fall seasons.  The trails were easy for us because they were dry, would cause soggy feet and a slower pace when wet.  So far so good for July on the IAT.

After the hike was not so serene.  Without going into too much detail, everyone was still here when I went to bed @ 9pm.  By midnight, Rick had packed up all of his things and his truck was gone.  Not my circus, not my elephants.

One last warm up day before we start hitting 20 milers.  12.4 miles tomorrow.  I’ll be giving myself a break and carrying the lightest weight I can in my pack.

“Shauna, stop!” I yelled.

“Shauna!” Brianna echoed.

We hadn’t been hiking more than 5 minutes after finishing lunch before the meadows we had been walking through tunneled into a dark forest.  Shauna lead the way, Brianna took the middle while I trailed the pack.  As the only one of the three with their head up, it was my responsibility to notify the group that a large black bear mama and her two cubs were on the trail in front of us, about 20 yards away.

“Is there a tick on my butt?” Shauna asked as she finally looked up.

Mama bear looked in our direction and stood on her hind legs as the babies climbed up trees.  All of this is well and good.  Encountering a pissed off mama bear and scaring her cubs up a tree right next to the trail.  What could we do?  Make noise and not advance any further.  So we waited.  It was only a few minutes before the babies came down and ran off into the forest.  We breathed a sigh of relief, but were not out of the woods yet (get it? ha ha).

“Hey Bear, Bear!” we sang down the trail that seemed to be winding back down the direction they had all just run away to.  Sure enough, a fourth Bear popped up and climbed a tree further down the trail.  This bear was an adolescent, maybe just a year old, bigger than the cubs but significantly smaller than the mama.  It too would eventually climb down the tree and run away.

The other part of the story that has been left out up until this point is that we had a fourth member of our party, Curt.  He did not want to stop for lunch with us and carried on solo.  Curt had texted me about the bugs being bad but did not see the bears even though he had passed by this same spot just 15-20 minutes prior.  Go ahead and roll those possibilities around in your head for a while.

Today’s trail had a lot of extraordinary parts before the bears.  Milk weed pastures with monarch butterflies in flight. A chained gate that lead to three horses feeding next to an old barn house on a large chunk of pasture land.  We expected to see horses, but to be given permission to walk with them on the trail, that’s pretty cool.  All days have been good, this one leads the pack as best.  The hiking was so good, I don’t even mind the dozens of ticks we picked off ourselves.

Tomorrow, day 5, will be a longer mile day with a mostly full pack day.  We will be carrying all of our gear, just 1 day of food and 2 liters of water.  

Wish us luck in our first hike without the family.

It was a morning of warm goodbyes with watery eyes to the people who did so much to help us survive.  Off after a face kiss, oh they will be missed.

We are eternally grateful for all of the support Penny, Curt, and Shauna have given to us.  They do so much and ask for nothing in return.  People love us and we love them <3.

A walk through the woods with a side of bugs, please.  Bugs flew into our eyes, we snorted bugs through our noses and spit them out our mouths.  At one point, Brianna was sneezing because bugs had flown up her nose and had gotten lodged there.  When she stopped to blow her nose, there were two bugs along with her snot.  This pretty much sums up our day.

Person reading this: Why didn’t you have your bug net on?

Me: I didn’t have it with me.

Person reading this: So it’s your fault.

Me: Yes.  That’s kind of a jerk thing to say, but I’m not surprised that it’s you who would say it.

Anyone can bullshit their way through a 10 – 12 mile hike.  Hike all morning, eat lunch, hike for a few more hours and done.  Things get a little bit more logistically challenging when you start going over 15 – 30 mile days.  We have to start earlier to beat the heat.  We have to start earlier to give ourselves time to take breaks in the middle of the day, take our shoes off every now and then and just say, “F it” for a while.  Our legs have adjusted to the hiking life well, it’s the feet that have to be babied along.

To hit our goal of a 20 mile average day, we have to hit an average of 2 mph.  Seems easy enough, just keep in mind that 2 mph includes all time on the trail, to include breaks.  If Brianna and I have a average walking speed of 3.11, then we’ve got 1.11 mph extra for use on all the breaks.  We have short infrequent breaks in the morning, long and very frequent breaks as the day and our feet get more hot, as the bugs chew down our will to live.

We met another hiker on the trail today, sort of.  I’m not sure what his name was, we never gave ours either, but he was driving around with his huge St. Bernard mix dog, “Lincoln”, scoping the different parking areas on the IAT.  He and his son are planning a 100 mile hike in August, pretty cool!  He wished us luck in a near Uper accent and we wished it back in our lower Michigan accent.

Tonight we are camped at the Timberland Hills West Ski parking area.  There is a loud road nearby, but this area is a gift.  All the other dispersed camping areas and parking lots we have seen did not have good camping options.  Shauna brought us cold pops and is camping with us tonight!

Oh and we saw 4 or 5 more bears today.  Yeah, I’m saying this all casually now that they are everywhere.  If I don’t have a story for every bear encounter, we are probably handling them correctly.

Timberland Hills & Grassy Lake segments of the IAT are not my favorites.  Timberland Hills is a cross country skiing course the IAT also makes use of.  The track is wide with long grass that never dries out, has steep hills that are look pretty fun as a skier, not so much as a hiker.  Grassy lake is pretty similar, instead of ski tracks, we were on two tracks.  This section of the IAT goes through more wetlands than I have ever seen in my life, add that in with wet feet and more bugs than you can count and you have what we hiked today.

Interesting fact I have learned firsthand.  The IAT organization builds benches for people to sit on along the trail.  Most of these benches overlook swamps and other bodies of bug infested waters.  They are probably pretty cool places to stop in the winter, not once have I considered stopping for a sit during the summer.  The bench is a bug dinner plate and I am not putting myself directly on it.  If they want to eat me, they will have to keep working for it.

After yesterday’s lesson, we both applied bug cream and donned bug nets before starting the day.  I brought my head net and relied on my protected pants and long sleeve hoodie to keep my extremities protected.  Brianna wore shorts and a short sleeve shirt underneath a full bug suit.  Both of our approaches seemed to work well against the bugs, with some drawbacks.  My approach allowed me to take the head net off and put it back on quickly, but I did get bites on my shoulders.  Brianna didn’t get any bites, but taking the bug suit off quickly when it wasn’t needed for a while wasn’t possible and simple tasks like drinking water or eating snacks took a lot of effort.

Neither of us broke mentally today, at least not completely.  One saving grace we still have to help us in times of need is the Shauna.  Shauna let us dump most of our pack weight into her car.  She also picked up some gallons of water and met us around mile 13.5 for the day to help resupply us – there was only one water source today and it was around mile 3.5.  Funnily enough, as Shauna was resupplying our water, an old man who loves to hike the IAT & NCT stopped by the parking lot and asked us if we needed any water, soda, etc.  We were all set but it’s good to know these Trail Angels are out there.

Brianna & I were both exhausted by the end of the hiking day.  We started trying to hike a certain amount of time before breaks but never actually made it to the goals, even as we tried to make them shorter.  After our last break before making the final two mile push, Shauna had texted me about the campground she had found, Whitetail Ridge:  The campground has a bar and showers but both close at 6pm.

Brianna was in top speed mode and I knew she couldn’t go faster, so I withheld the new intel.  Her first sprint lasted about a mile before she started to slow.  Like a fox on a rabbit, that’s when I sprung, “I know you don’t need any more motivation but Shauna says the showers are only open until 6pm… it’s 4:45pm.  And boom, so began sprint #2.  With a shower on the mind, she was actually running.  I had to keep up with her while texting Shauna that she needed to be at the parking lot to pick us up ASAP.  Brianna moved her little feet so fast that we beat Shauna to the parking lot, from a campground that is only 3 miles away.

Did I withhold information?  Yes.

Did my plan work exactly as I thought it would? Yes.

We all got showers.

We are tucked away in the corner of Whitetail Ridge campground.  The rustic camping area is free of bugs and people.  Tomorrow will be the most miles we have ever hiked in a day AND the most road miles we have ever done in a day.  On the plus side, we road walk right by a Dairy Queen… kismet.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends.  Someone must be held accountable for incorrect waypoints on the Apple Maps application.  When we arrived at the Dairy Queen address on Main St in Haugen, WI, it was a residential home.  Undeterred and hungry for what we had been craving all day, we knocked on the door and asked that the home owner give us ice cream in exchange for American currency; they refused.  After about an hour of arguing we recommended they either start serving ice cream as Apple Maps says they do or change their address.  I’ll monitor the situation and report back next year.

Today’s hike started at the Bear Lake Segment and on into Tuscobia.  Bear Lake was back to the single track hiking Brianna and I do so enjoy, at least for a bit.  Eventually, the trail melded into a Cub Scout camp where you could see cabins, practice shelter buildings, even an amphitheater.  The camp was deserted of cubs, but there were a group of kids swimming in the nearby lake, we exchanged a “hello” as we hiked by.

Over 5 miles of road walking separate Bear Lake and Tuscobia.  As you may have guessed, we did not get DQ as we had hoped.  We did stop in the Hausen Village Store where a kind old lady talked me into buying some Wisconsin cheese curds my Mountain Dew & Brianna’s Ruby Red Squirt.  The curds were pretty delicious.  She also asked me sign her guest book, so I put a little note in about the trail and signed Brianna & I’s name on it.

Tuscobia is another abandoned railroad turned recreational trail, like the Gandy Dance except better.  Unlike the Gandy, Tuscobia has softer dirt paths, easier on the knees.  Wide and well maintained trails led to less bugs, for the most part, until we got halfway through and hit a patch of wetlands on both sides of the trail.

It was a long day, but no day is truly long when Shauna is still here hanging with us.  Shauna got us another campground, this time in Birchwood, with a $.50 x7 minute shower.  We showered up and hit the local Bluegill Bar & Grill, which didn’t have Bluegill anywhere on the menu, but was still delicious.

There is something worth sharing about the city of Birchwood.  The city has country music playing throughout the entire downtown.  Downtown isn’t big, it was just a bit odd to drive down the street and hear Dolly Parton the entire time.

Hit 100 miles today.

🎶 My feet hurt, my knees hurt, and I don’t love Jesus 🎶 

-Brianna was singing this as we were laying in the tent getting ready for bed.

Hiking sometimes feels like an endless game of ‘would you rather’.

Would you rather walk on hard pavement or on a slightly less hard gravel but slanted side road?

Would you rather walk with your face free and fight off flies and mosquitoes or put a bug net on and be hot?

The correct answer is, Jack Nicholson 1974.

Today was hot.  The high wasn’t too bad but it was in the 80s by 10-10:30am.  We started the day with a 2+ mile road walk before reaching the Hemlock Creek Segment, which was a mix of shade and open areas.  Our pace slowed considerably due to the heat, it was 30 mins of walking followed by 20 min breaks.  It was slow and brutal but a necessary approach.  We will need to start getting up earlier and taking advantage of prime temperatures as the summer days get even more hot.

Halfway through our day and right around lunch time, we came across an oasis of a park.   Murphy’s park has everything: toilets, water, a trash can, picnic tables in a roofed shelter.  We stayed in the park for at least an hour, eating lunch, resupplying water, laying on the ground and counting our lucky stars.  

The Blue Hills was our second and most challenging segment of the day.  Much of the IAT is multi purpose trail and the Bill Hills shares much of its length with two track ATV roads.  It lives up to its name, very hilly.  I bet ATV riders love all the ups and downs, all the random nearly impassable by foot boggy areas.  I’m really happy for them.

My favorite part of the Blue Hills Segment, oddly enough, was the swamps.  There were parts where the trail was below the water line, held up only by old beaver dams.  I’ll include a picture here so you can see one.  If Wisconsin doesn’t have the highest beaver population in the USA, I bet they are the happiest in the USA.  Those critters have HUGE homes in every swamp and the swamps are plentiful.  We had to walk over more than a couple beaver dams.  Again, the bugs are bad, but I’m grateful not to be hiking the trail during a wet season.  I imagine these beaver dams overflow and make a right mess of things.

Blister report:  5 blisters in total.  x1 on each of my pinky toes, x1 in between my big toes on each foot, x1 on the right side heel of my right foot.  I get this heel blister on every hike, I suspect it has to do with the fact that my right foot naturally angles in just a bit to the left when I walk.  Not sure why that is, but it’s been that way for a while.

Tonight has us at Rose’s Bay Resort.  That’s right, we are thru hiking and staying at a resort!  It’s actually an 80s style cabin with two bedrooms, a small kitchen and a pooper.  The bar is next door, so we grabbed a couple of pizzas and some Wisconsin beers for cultural indulgence purposes.  We are making campground and other reservations at the last minute so our options are what they are and we take them as they are available.  On one hand, it’s hard to imagine what life will be like once we are alone here.  On the other hand… let the times roll :-).

Today’s plan was centered around weather and walking.  Severe thunderstorms were scheduled to roll into our area around 1pm and we wanted to get as many miles in as possible.  On the trail by 0630, 15.0 miles completed; we kicked ass.  Our plan called for a 22 mile day, that’s 7 missed miles that we will make up, or not.  7 miles may not seem like much, but it throws every other day off.  We can’t just camp or get water anywhere we want, it has to be planned.

We started our day in the Southern Blue Hills and finished with a road walk.  Going East, as we are, Southern Blue hills were still very hilly, mostly downhill.  About 3/4 of the way through Blue Hills, we came across a really interesting piece of art, or cursed land, or ? There were large metal wheels with cow bones and skulls fastened at various points.  As I recall, that part of the trail was through private land. Whether this centerpiece served some functional purpose or was out there to mess with hikers, I have no idea.  Picture included below.

The road walking was, well, walking on the road.  Shauna scooped us up right before the storms started and we drove an hour south to Chippewa Falls, home of Leinenkugel beer!  We stopped in the brewery and drank a couple of beer flights before retiring to our small cabin, safe from the rain.  Tomorrow is our last day with Shauna.  Things are about to get real.

I have been thinking about whether or not long distance hiking gives a person more time to think.  At face value, it might seem like existence of the question answers itself, and I’d agree to a point. There are so many things going on in my head at any given moment in time.  

Do we have enough water?  How much distance to the next break? My feet hurt. I’m hungry. Are we on schedule? My knees hurt.  Still no cell service? My legs itch. I miss Athena.  Can we make it to camp before dark?  What was that noise?  Oh, look, a bear.

All of those thoughts are happening while I’m checking the trail ahead for bears and the ground below for roots and rocks.  Sounds difficult when I write it like that, but probably equivalent to watching a movie while working and drinking coffee.

People talk about finding deeply meaningful thoughts on the trail and that just has not been my experience.  I’m not hiking in search of answers, but I do like comparing what people say to my personal reality.  I am changing.  Probably more like the movie Inception, the forest is planting seeds into my dreams and slowly changing who I am.  Long distance hiking is more about being a back woods project manager than it is about being a philosopher, as of today anyway.

You may be wondering how it is possible for a trail to stretch across all of Wisconsin.  The short answer is that it doesn’t really work that way.  The IAT and pretty much all other long trails are a patchwork of many small segments.  We walk through all kinds of land, State, County, privately owned. When a Trail organization, like the Ice Age Alliance, is unable to find a way to connect two pieces of land, they use roads as connector routes, a.k.a CRs.

Road walking is not my favorite, neither do I hate it.  We started our day today with a 13.4 mile CR.  I was never day dreaming about the road walking parts of this adventure before it all started, but the advantages are clear.  Our feet are dry, not having to trek through muck after yesterday’s downpour.  Significantly fewer bugs.  Much less likely to get lost.  Most of the roads are old country roads with few cars, which means I can take my phone out and write as we walk.  I’d like to download the Game of Thrones audiobooks and listen to some, lots of possibilities.

You might be asking yourself, “where do you go the bathroom on a 20+ mile road walk?” and I would simply say, “anywhere you can find cover.”  I had this concern and more, but you do what you gotta do, when you gotta do it and hope for the best.  That’s part of the adventure?

Another fact I have to remind myself about road walking is what happened to us on our NCT Manistee Trail hike back in June of 2020.   Brianna and I were road walking when a nice woman invited us in, bought us beer, washed our clothes, cooked us dinner and let us stay the night in their camper during a storm.  The trail community is small and strong, she took us in during prime COVID time without thinking twice. 

Road walking puts you next to people, and for better or worse, those are the people that will help you if things aren’t going well.  As a rough looking man with an ever growing beard, I appreciate that people will be more willing to help me when a cute Brianna is around.

This morning was a long CR AND probably our best morning yet.  We headed down the road with a water bottle each and some snacks, everything else stayed in the car.  Shauna had scouted ahead and reported back about an amazing beach access park with pit toilets just 10 miles into our hike.  Without packs on, Brianna and I made it to the park in under 3 hours.

The park was as Shauna had advertised, amazing.  We wasted no time in taking off our shoes off and dipping them into the cold sandy water.  Brianna has been making jokes as we hike by swamps, wondering out loud when one will have a sandy beach.  Here is her sandy beach!

After lunch, it was time to shoulder our packs, finish the last few miles of our road walk and head onto the Chippewa Moraine trail.  This trail is worth the road walking price of admission, easily the most beautiful area we have hiked on the IAT to this point.  Our path weaved through and around untouched kettle lakes for 6 or 7 miles.  Native American trail marker trees dotted the path, directing us where to go as a cool breeze hugged our bodies throughout the hilly terrain.  We took breaks on the perfectly placed benches whenever we wanted.  For the first time on the trail, I stopped thinking about how many miles we had left to hike on the day.

Tonight is our last night with Shauna.  The race is on to restock our supplies for the next stretch of interesting hiking days: food, toiletries, hand sanitizer, Advil, medical supplies.  Anything we don’t have now will have to be picked up in the city of Cornell where the trail passes a local market.  Tomorrow is a short day and Sunday is a very long day.  Not the way we want it, just what we have to do for camping purposes.

Another day, another goodbye.  We hung out with Shauna longer and started hiking later than usual this morning.  Partly because today’s hike is shorter and partly because we didn’t want to part ways.  We haven’t had the opportunity to spend this much time with Shauna since we all lived together over a decade ago. 

Shauna the amazing Trail Angel had really gotten the routine down well in just a week of traveling solo with us.  Brianna and I use an app called Guthooks to navigate the trail, it has waypoints and comments from other hikers on water, camping, parking, etc.  Shauna purchased the maps for the IAT and used them to navigate around.  By the time she had to leave, she was planning our days and meeting us randomly throughout the trail.  We offered her an unpaid position as our trail coordinator, she declined.

We ran into our first real hikers today!  We actually ran into them at the very end of yesterday but our encounter was brief and did not warrant mentioning.  This time, we ran into them after taking a side trail down to Picnic lake for lunch; Picnic Lake a primitive camping site on Picnic Lake right at the end of Hardwood Lakes segment.

The three young ladies invited us into their space for lunch, even cleared us off a bench to sit.  We chatted while we ate, almost entirely about our hiking experiences. They had many questions and were very impressed by how small our packs are.  They seem like good people, probably our people, but we did not ask their name nor did they ask ours.  All we really know about them is that they are all friends and from Minnesota, out on an adventure together for no other reason than to spend time together.

After our brief lunch and social time, Brianna and I only hiked about .5 miles before taking another long break.  We typically take our shoes and socks off at lunch, not something we wanted to defile their beautiful lunch spot with.

The Hardwood Lake & Firth Lake segments were very hilly with fewer lakes than the Chippewa Moraine.  We were moving slowly through the woods since there was no real reason to hurry, only twelve miles scheduled for the day.  Around 2:30 or 3, Brianna started sending messages to the Ice Age Trail Facebook group, asking if anyone had ideas for where we could camp if we wanted to hike further.  A group member suggested we call the city office, so we did, and quickly learned that there is a reserved spot for Ice Age thru hikers at the state park.

Dare we hike 8 extra miles today?  We do dare.  It was late, but that could also play to our advantage with cooler temperatures.  And so we were off.  The pace, staggering.  The pain, real.  Our drive, unstoppable.  Check the picture below, those stats are with x4 breaks over those 8.1 miles in 3 hours 57 minutes.

By the time we made it to Cornell, our bodies and feet had reached their limits.  We rested on benches outside the closed Visitor’s Center before willing ourselves back up to complete the final 2 miles up to Brunet Island State park. This, my friends, is when unbelievable trail magic happened.

“Are you two walking up to the state park?” A man in a truck asked, stopping in the middle of the road.

“Yes.” We answered.

“Do you have reservations?  Do you want a ride? You should just come sleep in our basement.  We have a shower and you can do laundry.  Does that sound good to you?”

“Yes!” We answered excitedly

And that is how our night ended.  Instead of a 2+ mile trek up a hill to find a hidden camp spot, a kind man and his wife took us in.  We showered, did laundry, ate hot turkey sandwiches, drank whisky sours and had warm blueberry peach cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top for dessert.

Remember a few days ago when I mentioned how important people are when you’re on an adventure like this?  There are great people in this world just waiting to be met.  If we put ourselves out there, be vulnerable, the world may just show up.  People want to help other people succeed.  As our host for tonight said when sharing some of his past experiences, “those are the parts of our adventures that we never forget.”  

On a side note.  If anyone finds themself in Cornell, WI, thru-hiking or otherwise, go to the Main Scoop ice cream shop.  The ice cream is delicious and the people are top notch.

Our morning started just the same as the night had ended, trail magical.  Our fantabulous hosts, Paul and Ann, made us coffee with a side of bacon, eggs and toast.  We all sat in their three seasons room for a while and chatted about our lives, getting to know one another better in the light of a new day.  It turns out that a popular bicycling trail runs through Cornell and they take in cyclists quite often, we were their first hikers.  I think we did our hiker community proud in cleaning up after ourselves and saying thank you on repeat.

After breakfast, Paul took us for a drive to view the beautiful park we were planning to stay at last night.  It would have been a much longer walk up than we thought!  Very pretty island park though, I can see why it’s so popular, seclusion of an island with access to the town resources just a short drive away.

Paul insisted on taking us by the Main Scoop ice cream shop and grabbing us each our own triple scope waffle cones before parting ways.  It was DELICIOUS.  I got dark chocolate with brownie and caramel swirls.  Brianna got pecan praline.

Our last stop for the morning, and where we would say our final goodbyes to Paul, was the grocery store.  Brianna and I ran in while Paul watched our gear, we needed a couple more breakfasts, a couple more packs of skittles… all-in-all, could not have asked for a better way to start the day.

The flip side of having such a great morning was that we started our walking day a bit later than usual.  A walking day that was to be 100% road walking.  It was a long and hot one.

When I previously wrote about road walking, I focused on the positives.  In today’s thoughts, I’ll share the cons.

Road walking is terrible because:

1.) Wisconsin has lots of farm lands that offer no shade, no matter what time it is.

2.) Temperature on black top is 5-10 degrees higher.

3.) Walking on a hard surface is harder on the knees.

4.) Sometimes it gets so hot and you get so tired that the best rest option is a ditch on the side of the road. You get to lay in tall grass and hope for the best.

About halfway through our 25 mile road walk, we were due to pass by two campgrounds, Adam’s Acres & Jim’s Shady Nook.  Jim’s was on a lake so we called ahead and asked if we could stop and fill water, relax for a while in the heat of the day.  The waitress said, “yes, of course”, so we marched on and made it there a little after 1pm.  It was too early for camping, perfectly soon for a couple beers and some waffle fries.

Jim’s Shady Nook is just what you would expect from a back woods campground and bar.  The people were all friendly, asked us many questions as they took shots and ordered beer after beer.  They also filled us in that the bar was less crowded than usual on a Saturday because Rockfest was happening just five miles down the road.  Rockfest had been canceled because of COVID last year and sold out quickly at crazy high prices this year.

I learned how the dice game at the bar works – pay $1 and get three chances for a Yahtzee that matches the day’s number.  Get the Yahtzee and you win the bar pot.  Fail to get the Yahtzee and you lose the $1, which then goes into the pot.

After about two hours, we reluctantly left Jim’s Shady Nook and headed back onto the road.  Our breaks were frequent and not always pleasant, but it’s just not smart or safe to walk for long periods of time hauling this kind of weight on our backs.  Our goal for the night was to make it to Otter Lake campground, where we had called and confirmed there would be camping available.  They also told us the site caretakers, Liz and Mike are IAT hikers and would probably be happy to receive us.

Everything was going well until the last bit.  I turned down the Otter Park Day area thinking it would probably be connected to the camping area, I was wrong.  By the time we hiked the 3/4 of a mile back to the park’s day area, Brianna’s feet were done and it was clear that we would not be walking back.  So we waited.  We waited for the caretakers to close the park down and see two sad hikers in need of a ride to the actual camping area.  

Liz did eventually come shut the day park down and gave us a ride over to the camp.  She gave us site #1 and a quick rundown for where water and bathrooms were before disappearing into their camper.  Sunday is chicken and polka day, they needed to rest up for the festivities.  Brianna & I set camp up in the dark and are calling it a night just as quickly as we can fall asleep.