Day 49, 20 miles

After a lovely breakfast with our wonderful hosts we get shuttled back to the trail and continue our walk.

This is another one of those really long roadwalk sections and Kodachrome had told me there was a shorter route possible. As I started looking at the maps I realized we could go straight across and cut out 15 miles of road. Steady who is up ahead confirmed that this was a good route to take. Again I don’t mind walking but if I can cut out road on a hot day I’m all for it.

We take the bike route to Bump road and from then take Townsend road straight across. It’s a nice quiet road until we hit County road A. The three miles on A are part of the suggested Connecting Route and they are brutal. It’s starting to get really hot and there is no shoulder. Everytime a car drives by we have to walk down a steep gravelly bank. And there are lots of fast moving cars. I hate it.

I’m starting to overheat and when we approach a shady dirt track I motion to Greenleaf to head over there. We lay down on our pads and cool off. I’m glad we’re carrying so much water. It was heavy in the morning but so worth it.

Just a short bit further we leave the road and head into the arboretum. In the parking lot we randomly meet Tina who hiked the Ice Age trail last year. She mentions a platform we may be able to camp at. That sounds great. She also tops off our water bottles. We still had some but it was all warm and less appetizing.

We have a nice chat and then head on into the woods. It’s so lovely after the pavement pounding.

We add more water to our bottles from a lovely artesian well along the way.

We get a message from Tina saying we have permission to use the platform and we found our home for the night. Sweet!