Day 199: Connecting Route, Waushara and Portage Counties

Day 199: Saturday, June 25th, 2022

Total Miles hiked for the day: 14.7; Net Miles 0.0 

Today was a busy, broken, glorious Saturday on the trail. We packed in a whole weekend of fun today, starting with a very early start (for us) from home. This morning we agreed to meet a group of children who were going to go out hiking on the Hartman Creek Segment. What made it special was that all of these kids were legally blind (most were totally blind), so getting out and hiking on a trail was a real adventure for them. 

They each had sighted hiking companions with them, naturally, and for most this was their first such adventure, part of a weekend camping trip. 

We arrived a few minutes late, but they were running a bit late anyway. We took a few minutes and handed out patches to each of the kids, their hiking companions, and anyone else who was participating. Then Theresa and I took turns telling the kids about our experiences on the trail and what kinds of things they could expect while they walked. 

Theresa focused mostly on how she was overcoming her physical limitations and how it was possible with the right equipment that even she could enjoy being out hiking on the trails. I focused more on the things that they would feel, hear and smell as they walked, from the flowers and pine scent, to the sounds of the birds and insects, to the springy, soft feel of pine needles on sandy soil. 

In the end, we lined them all up for a group photo. 

It would have been my enormous pleasure to have been able to walk with them, but unfortunately we had other plans today and couldn't stay with the group.

Location: The Connecting Route between the Emmons Creek Segment and the Deerfield Segment

14.7 Miles of trail covered

As simple as it sounds to say we walked 14.7 miles on this connecting route, it wasn't very simple at all. In fact, it was broken into three distinctly different hikes. 

The first leg was between the Emmons Creek parking lot on 2nd Avenue to the turnoff on 15th Road. We had planned to meet up with Barb Much Wussow, whom we had met much earlier while we were hiking out in Manitowoc County but didn't get to walk with. As it turned out all of us needed to hike the 2.6 miles along this road, so we met up with her at the Emmons Creek parking area at 11:00 and then we went to the corner and started walking our way back east. 

We walked past this old one-room schoolhouse built in 1913, which was now in private ownership and is apparently being kept up well.

I was a little surprised, though, when I zoomed in and saw that the 's' in 'Dist' was backwards.

The walk along this road was pleasant, seemingly more of a wide walking path than a narrow roadway.

I noticed this little peeper off the side of the road as we were walking. I think it's a baby common yellowthroat. It was definitely too young to be out of the nest, but I'm guessing it flew out on its own while testing its tiny, little wings. As I was taking pictures it managed, with furious effort, to fly a few feet and into the grass.

Good luck, little peeper.

We didn't see a single car pass by while we walked.

But I did see this bladder campion.

And this salsify.

We also spotted this stone garden, or whatever you want to call it.

And fairly soon we were back where we started.

I forgot to take a picture at the end, so I took this photo when we made our way back to our launch vehicle a few minutes later. It was 1:24 pm. Barb was on her way elsewhere, and we were headed south.

The second phase of our hike was actually just my hike, because Theresa had already walked a good portion of the road from this point south, all the way to Apache Drive. She did this yesterday while I was busy with something for work. That meant that while I had another 12.1 miles to walk, she had only five miles to go.

Our plan was for me to just turn my toes south and start walking, while she drove all the way down to the other end at the north end of the Deerfield Segment and hike my way. She was hiking part three, while I hiked parts 2 and 3. It meant I would only see her one more time today while I was walking, but it gave her the ability to walk at a comfortable pace while I was in turbo-snail mode.

I spent very little time on photos, for some reason, but I put a lot of time into more of my Random Road Hiking Thoughts, which I posted to Facebook as I walked.

More random road hike thoughts:

1. Anyone who can take a pill with hot coffee deserves to get well.

2. What goes on inside a chrysalis is nothing short of miraculous.

3. There's no such thing as the largest number I can think of.

4. I never really used my bachelors degree in forestry. Turns out being able to identify a Siberian Pea Tree wasn't a lucrative skill.

5. Even if I am living in an inverted multiplex shadow matrix dream state computer-simulated universe, I still have to feed the cat.

6. Even if only 0.01% of the population is affected by something that's still 33,000 people in the US alone.

7. Just because I've never seen a purple banana doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

8. If people had 12 fingers instead of ten, there would be two more "single digits" in use, as in, two more numbers crammed between 8 and 9 or whatever. Suddenly 12 inches to a foot would seem completely logical.

A. If they changed the scale of the dots on the Atlas map to be one dot every tenth of a mile it would be easier to calculate how far we've gone.

B. This is probably how the hexadecimal system got invented.

9. The real "adult" beverage is water.

10. The release of the movie 'Forrest Gump' is closer in time to the Neil Armstrong moon landing than today. For Star Wars and Back to the Future it isn't even close.

These are the things that come to my mind while I walk.

I'm not sure anyone ever got the joke about there being twelve items on that list.

The first three miles down to Akron Ave, also the Portage-Waushara county line, was pretty flat and uneventful. Walking through the 'Town' of Heffron was equally uneventful, though it does have a bar, a cemetery and at least one geocache. Beyond that, it's really just an intersection.

South of there, County A gets a tiny bit busier (I saw at least one car) and actually has a bump or two. I passed Akron Drive, then Akron Lane (the people out here have no more imagination than the ones at the south end of the county where every other road was named 'Czech'), and made my way to County P.

Actually, though I did have to hike uphill a bit on that stretch, there was a fairly major downhill stint, dropping over 100 feet in elevation to the marshy spot just north of P.

What goes down must go back up again, and the road went back up to 1130 feet in elevation (a 70-foot climb) before dropping right down again 40 feet and rollercoaster-ing all the way to Apache Drive.

So far I had walked the six and a half miles that Theresa covered yesterday. I hadn't expected to see her anywhere along that route, but I knew I would be seeing her sometime in the near future. Even when I am hiking as fast as I can go I am not twice as fast as she is unless she is being intentionally slow.

I went down one more big hill on the way to County Road A, and then within the next half mile or so, I spotted her happy face.

Things were going just about to plan. She had about a mile and a half left to walk, and I had closer to three miles.

Headed south, the next thing I had to do was hike down into a hole in the earth with a lake a the bottom that was undoubtedly just a giant kettle pond.

There was a ring of dead trees around the outside of the lake - a good indication that there had been more precipitation than usual, and the bowl was filling up.

This was the second such decent into a kettle pond along this road, and given the fact that the road sits so close to both Chain Lake and Lake Wautoma, I can easily envision the area getting flooded now and again. Neither one of those lakes has an kind of outlet beyond seepage.

I really wanted this hike to be over, but there was actually quite a bit of walking left to do.

About two tenths of a mile before reaching Hwy 73 I spotted a pretty good place for van camping next to this tower on the south side of County O. There is a large flat area that is shielded from the road by pine trees. I'm keeping that one in mind for the future.

And then I finally reached the car, after crossing 73 and making my way to the Deerfield Segment. The car was waiting for me there, and I drove back to pick Theresa up, who had been walking back my way slowly after reaching her end point at Apache Road. We came back here for the photo. I was too tired to make it all the way up to the sign, so Theresa went and touched it for me. I was touching her at the time. That counts, right?

The tally:

• 12 new Snails today
• Completed the Waushara-Portage County connecting route
• Completed maps 48, 49 and 50
• Converted 14.7 miles of biking to the 'hiked' category
• 86.2 miles to go (Yay! we're under 100!!)

Running Total: 1212.2 miles of trail covered (1050.8 hiked), 346.0 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 199.

.

.

Return to Table of Contents

.