Mile 3274.8 – The adventure continues

I woke up in Fond Du Lac, well refreshed. I think not drinking the night before helped. I wanted to get to the Wild Goose State Trail, which leads from Fond Du Lac to Highway 60, just past Juneau. It was a little unclear where the trail started, but I knew I had to get to the Rolling Meadows Golf Course on the southwestern corner of the town. I crossed highway 41, then proceeded to take a slight detour to take in some of the farmland south and west of town. I did eventually make it to the golf course and found the trailhead.

Almost immediately I was thrust back into a lush green world. Much of the trail is tree-lined, sometimes to the point of being called wooded. There are breaks and patches between the trees, opening a vista of pastures and farms broken by double lines of trees. There was one camera shot I tried to take that would have been called ‘Cows, Corn, Eagle, Turbine’ but I didn’t quite manage the picture I wanted. Again, the camera is too feeble an instrument to capture the sense of everything around me. Everything was growing, from the wild tall grasses and corn well ahead of the ‘knee high by the fourth of july’ maxim to the birds growing fat on the spiders and insects buzzing around. The landscape possessed a quality lacking in the rock and snow of the mountain heights or the multi-colored sands of the desert: everywhere around there was life. Every shade of green I could imagine was present.

The trail starts southwest but nudges south around the shoulder of the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. Wetlands now entered the scene, grassy meadows covering the hills above them studded with islands of trees. Mallards sloppily played in the water while egrets stood tall and silent at the edge of the grass. I took a break at a bench and watched a large spider explore one of Penny’s tires, only to leave it for more favorable hunting grounds. Unfortunately there were plenty of mosquitoes around and my bug spray is almost running out. I snacked on leftovers of a couple of meals from the past few days, the end of last night’s burrito being the star, then climbed onto the bike again.

The trail goes back into farmland past the end of the Horicon Marsh. My next break was in Juneau, where I asked a woman I saw on the street which of the tree bars in town I should grab a bite in. It was just one of those days where I was constantly hungry. There are about 4 miles of trail left between Juneau and highway 60. For this stretch, a group of local students have put up a scale map of our solar system, with plaques representing the distance to each planet. It really helps to visualize the great distances between the planets. I passed the first four within about half a mile, but then the distance from Mars to Jupiter was pretty long. By Saturn, I had stopped looking for the plaque and almost passed it. Pluto, of course, downgraded to a dwarf planet (it’s not Pluto’s fault there are 7 moons in our solar system larger than it) appeared at the trailhead at highway 60. I took another break there to eat a bit more.

Traffic wasn’t too bad, though I never had a shoulder wider than 4’. I turned south at highway 67 aiming for the southern campground at the Kettle Moraine State Park. I stopped for a break in Oconomowoc, one of my favorite place names in Wisconsin. Oconomowoc, Oconomowoc, Oconomowoc.

As I got to Douseman a few miles down the road, the clouds started getting thicker and the sun lowered itself to the horizon. I entered the park, and, given the looks of the clouds, opted to stop at the closer northern campground instead. I found one of the empty spots on the large grounds and paying my $14 for a non-state resident, pitched my tent. I could hear thunder cracking in the west and as I started loading panniers into the tent, the first drops of rain started falling.

Soon the thunderstorm arrived. The clouds were too thick and the aperture of my tent too narrow to see the individual bolts, but the ever-changing illumination of the trees and clouds was fantastic. It was a light show unrivaled by any technology known to Hollywood. Stage right, a flash of light so bright, you could see color in the trees around. A sizzle, then the roar of the thunder as it streaks above. Stage left, another flash, bright and sustained. A sizzle as the higher frequency waves reach first, a crack as the middle of the pack arrives, then the solid, vibrating boom of the main peal.

My phone rang. My brother sounded a little frantic. ‘Where are you?’, he asked. The Ottowa Lake Campground in Kettle Moraine. He told me there was a tornado warning for Palmyra, the town on the western edge of the park, about 5 miles away. We both quickly agreed that I should seek shelter. I pulled on my rain pants, shoes and raincoat, grabbed the flashlight, phone and a bit of food and hid out in the bathroom, the only structure around I could get into. I stood there for a while watching out the windows as the light and sound show continued. At some point, I noticed I was not alone in the bathroom. In one of the stalls a small frog was sitting on the foot pedal-operated toilet flush. I looked down at the frog, the frog looked up at me. We agreed to let the other alone, and went on enjoying our storm.

At long last, my brother called to tell me the warning had cleared. Thank you for the heads-up, personal weather team! I waited for the rain to lighten up a bit, then went back to the tent. In my haste to leave, I left the flap open a bit too far. I had zipped the mesh door all the way closed, but a turn of the wind had sent a good amount of water inside. My sleeping bag, thankfully, was just beyond the wet. I sopped up what I could with my towel, and slept through the shortest night of the year with raincoat and pants on, using the sleeping bag as a cushion.

Day 53, Fond Du Lac, WI – Kettle Moraine State Park, WI
81.9 miles in 6:43:43 for 3274.8 in 267:37:11 of wheels spinning so far and a top speed of 24.3 mph