Gyros and a birthday party!
Could Potato Creek be the birthplace of the black flies?
The black fly activity died down overnight but several slugs were ready to take their place. They took the tent ceiling to be their new home and had to be forcibly removed in the morning.
We have a short road walk to the next segment which has a lot of swampy areas. The flowers are still fun to look at but the footing is tedious. Sometimes we are able to use rotten logs or rocks to step on and keep our feet dry, sometimes we aren’t that lucky. We have a few drier sections when we climb up on eskers. The secure footing is wonderful.
After about 7 miles of trail we make it to road and walk another 3 to the town of Weyerhaeuser. We’ve been fantasizing about cheese curds and bingo but instead settle for gyros and a chicken sandwich with a birthday party next door. Another hiker steps in and says he walked from Rice Lake to here on roads. We’re a little confused on why you would want to skip actual trail on a trail that already has so much roadwalking but to each his own.
We leave but make a short stop at the gas station store for some ice cream before starting the next long road walk.
It’s not a bad road walk especially with the cloud cover. A brief rain passes through and then it warms up again but we soon make it to potato creek where we set up camp. Getting water is very challenging since this seems to be where all the little black flies are hatching. The creek side is covered with a million of them and I manage to catch several in my water bottles while being covered in them. I want to get out of there quickly and do a poor job of filling the last bottle of water. The result is a lot of algae with flies and it all looks very gross. We decide to filter the one decent bottle and dump the rest. We should be able to fill up somewhere else tomorrow.
The evening entertainment is provided by a tick climbing on the netting of my tent. In the end I can’t stand him being there anymore and grab a pair of tweezers to relocate him. This works remarkably well and I’m so proud of myself. All is well again and I can drift off to sleep.
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