NCT Diary: July 28?- Aug 5th

Defiance, OH to Grand Rapids, MI

Woo here comes the experiment! As promised, these are rough and very very short.

Undated: Watching bats go overhead outside defiance

Undated: Why paved bike path also feels pointless in a different way than the wilderness loop. Trail chapter head gave very helpful notes, missing them once we actually got to MI. Organic farms better about mosquitoes, dragonfly memories from Winnipeg. Good podcasts are all on a break, so passed time thinking about next house and cute guest shed. Wabash cannonball bike path. Amazing trail that you can actually walk on, hard to define difference but has to do with going the correct direction (even when there's a detour, trail is worth it and also fairly direct). Hot, still afternoon in the corn.

Somewhere in here, we took a nearo in Hillsdale, which threw off our miles so that we were always hitting towns at bedtime.

Undated: Feeling like we're really in Michigan, subtle differences like the tendency to plant a lot of trees along roadways tell you you're in another state

July 31: woke up at horrible Days Inn in Albion, 2mi walk back to utterly deserted downtown. No coffee. bumping along roads, mileages messed up because each large town is roughly 30 miles apart, can't avoid town stays. Meeting Larry while taking a break on road

Aug 1: Michigan became differentiated from Ohio surprisingly quickly, which perhaps shouldn't have been a surprise, considering that Ohio had plunged us into subtropical Southern heat within a couple of days of leaving Pennsylvania. Maybe it was just that we were travelling north in a reasonably direct way, but the scenery changed fast into the forested, slightly boggy northern cottage country I expected to find based on my previous adventures. Long quiet gravel roads surrounded by woodlots, fields and the occasional cabin made for peaceful walking - finally, we wouldn't have trouble finding a place to camp. It also helped that the private property signs were no longer bloodthirsty - some of the no trespassing signs in Ohio had been outright terrifying. The NCTA chapters here were really great with signage, and were in the habit of providing county-by-county map pamphlets at their information boards. These mainly gave the locations for restrooms and parking areas, as designated campsites were non-existent, but their brief descriptions were still more helpful than the NCTA-provided Avenza maps, which only had basic icons sprinkled along the route. The local NCT chapters also provided the names of the volunteers that maintained whatever short sections of trail we were on, something that would never be done on the Buckeye. With the state of the trail maintenance in Ohio, nobody would want to be associated with any specific section - they'd get too much hate mail.

Aug 1: Great sleep, sad coffee, city roadwalk with deserted downtown, ice cream lunch, meeting Sophie the puggle. Picnic bench sleep

Aug 2: PB & J trail angels, Barry game area, hounds howling at night

My notes for August 3rd, 4th and 5th are just outright missing. On those days we made our way to Lowell, the NCTA's headquarters, where we were treated to lunch by some folks from the NCTA. The same day, we walked to the turnoff for Grand Rapids and got a ride in for our nearo with Ken, the NCT director. The next post is scheduled for tomorrow - we'll pick back up on August 6th.