Rainy Rest Day

We were so thrilled with the accommodations that after we got settled in we asked our host if we could stay another night. It was a whole house with a kitchen and laundry! We hadn’t had a zero day since August 5th at Pokagon State Park. Our host, Joann said yes. She also mentioned to Rose that she had to come home this week to mow her yard. I volunteered to do it. It was nice to be able to give back a little bit of kindness after all the kindness we have been shown. I’m always amazed and appreciative of the generosity of strangers but I dislike that’s its so one sided. It feels like all I do is take without ever giving back. Anytime we are at a WS host I try to ask if they have any jobs that they have been putting off until they had an extra set of hands. I would be happy to help them. Anyway mowing the grass reminded me of all the work-for-stay I did when I hiked the Apalachian Trail. Most of the hiker hostels only charged $10 or $15 dollars. Usually an hour or two of work got you a bunk for your own sleeping gear a shower,laundry and dinner. I did everything from cleaning bathrooms, cutting fire wood,painting building fences and even changed a car tire once. Usually dinner alone was worth it. Dinner was a big affair and often lasted over an hour. 10 or 12 hungry thru-hikers can put away some food. One of my favorite stays was at Mrs Shaws hostel in Millinocket, Maine. She didn’t cook dinner but made a trail famous breakfast. To keep things simple every one got the same thing. A hiker just chose the amount they wanted to eat by picking a number. I had just hiked out of the 100 mile Wilderness and was hungry. I picked 6 and got 6 eggs 6 pieces of bacon 6 sausage links 6 pancakes and 6 pieces of toast. For all that delicious food, a shower and a real bed my work for stay was to strip all 15 beds and put the sheets in the washer once all the hikers had left. Simple, and after that big of a breakfast I probably would of been the last one to leave anyway. On the other side of the spectrum was a hostel in VT. The Twelve Tribes was its name. Me and two other hikers got there at the same time and all of us asked to do work-for-stay. The Hostel said there was painting that needed done and we could do that. They gave all of us a two inch brush and one gallon of paint each. This particular hostel was also some sort of recreational hall or church. They showed the three of us a massive room and said to start painting. There were no windows or trim work or anything to use a two inch brush on. I guess us hikers had more experience painting then they did because we all said at the same time, paint where? The man said the walls, floor to ceiling. I think the man took our incredulous looks for looks of unwillingness because he left and came back with a chair sat down and watched us work. I will admitt there was some grumbling amongst us. As we painted our conversation revolved around food and what we hoped dinner would be. After a couple hours I politely asked how much longer we had to work. He said to paint until the can was empty. At those instructions our expectations for dinner went up quite a bit. Hikers don’t use there real name but use a trail name picked up along the way. After hearing that, No Sole said there had better be a whole Christmas dinner waiting when we got done. That got us all talking about ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes and all the other side dishes we could think of. I guess our talking was too much because after that we were told to go to separate walls. After several tedious hours our cans were finally empty. We were all very hungry and could hardly wait until dinner which was going to be served at 8pm. We had painted until 7:30 so we didn’t have too long to wait. We headed to the cafeteria with visions of a feast spread out over multiple tables. We were bitterly disappointed. There was a huge bowl of bean sprouts and a tub of soaked barley. Not cooked just barley in water. We ate enough to be polite while whispering to each other if there was a Domino’s that delivered. After leaving the table one of the hikers snuck into an office grabbed a phone book and called for 3 large pizzas. ( we didnt have cell phones back then)Somehow the hostel people learned of this and told us in no uncertain terms that pizza would not be allowed on their property. So we met the delivery driver out on the road and finally got some dinner. If you were one of the people who drove through that sleepy little Vermont town and saw 3 paint splattered hikers standing in the road at 10:30 pm eating pizza like they were starving , well now you know why. As the late Paul Harvey would say and now you know the rest of the story!

It turned out to be a very rainy day. Im glad we werent riding in it. I still mowed the lawn though. While I was mowing, Rose rode the one mile to the grocery store for some dinner items. We still haven’t found any stove fuel. It’s not super critical yet. We are on our last two cans but they have been going a while and you can’t really tell when they will run out. We have stopped at a few out door places but they were geared towards fishing and boating.Since we had a kitchen we cooked a lot for the next few days. We cooked 7 pounds of chicken thighs and a couple boxes of pasta. We also hard boiled a dozen eggs. As usual the day flew by but we accomplished a lot. Minor bike repairs laundry washing water bottles and doing all our dishes with hot water.

We left Hart today around 11. The wind was a bit tough but the roads were nice.

There was a little bit of everything today. Good roads and rough roads flat and some good climbs.

Also we finally saw some livestock.

Most of the farms have been grain or produce since we left Ohio

. Today was a lot of orchards and blueberries. Also a lot of asparagus.

We saw alpacas, donkeys and big fields of pumpkins. But one thing we didn’t see was a coffee shop .🥺☹️. However there was a great farm stand with a picnic table we stopped at for lunch. They had fresh cheese curds.

We got to Walkup Lake campground around 3. It is a primitive campground and only cost $10 dollars. We were going to stealth camp a little farther down the road but the wind made today pretty tough. We were happy to stop early. I walked down to the lake to get drinking water and of course I had to swim around a bit.

It was pretty cool today and after swimming I was a little chilly so I built a fire. It’s the first one we have had this trip. We don’t normally have one. Gathering firewood often seems like too much work after a day of cycling. Haha.

At the farm stand Rose bought 2 yellow squash. Since I had the fire going she grilled one of them and added the other to our dinner. Dinner was chicken, pasta, green peppers and squash. Maybe it’s yellow zucchini. I should know the difference! Lol I guess I didn’t pay enough attention growing up.