19 miles today. Total miles so far: 230.5
Otter Lake DCA to flattish spot.
I finished the .8 trail in the morning after packing up a very dusty tent. The site had just been put in and will hopefully firm up for future campers. After that, it was roads again for something like 18 miles. It was a cold and windy morning, but the back roads were pleasant and very lightly traveled. It started raining as I approached the Taft Town Hall (which sits alone at an intersection) to find a very nice porta potty. As I was getting ready to leave, the rain came down harder, so I retreated into the potty to let it pass. Any porta-potty in a storm, I guess you could say. Then more road walking, much of it into a cold headwind. I arrived in Lublin, a town with far more dead people than live ones as evidenced by the cemeteries at both ends of town, but it had a lovely community park with restrooms, water, and a pavilion where I made a hot meal and charged my phone while it rained. I've been getting into camp too late and tired to cook, but this late lunch helped warm me up.
Here, I also decided to try to do this section in 5 days rather than the 6 I'd packed for, so I offloaded some food into the nearby little free library/resource box and headed out into the rain for more road walking, eventually, finally, getting back to trail, only to find slippery, janky boardwalks. I saw a flat-ish spot about a mile in and, not seeing anything better, set up. A bad storm rolled in overnight and the wind shifted directions so some rain blew in under the tent fly, but not much got wet. Not the best sleep after back-to-back 19 mile days, but I was finally back in woods for most of the next several days.
