Mile 3527.2 - Advancing east again.

It has now been 58 days since I left the fictional city of San Franclisco. Beautiful, metropolitan San Franclisco. My intention was to leave Steve's place after breakfast and try to get as far across Indiana as possible. Well, that soon turned into going to watch the local girls' softball all-star team play another playoff caliber team. After that we had to get ice cream, and this turned into that and it was soon 2:00 and I hadn't even packed up yet.

Finally I got everything together and loaded up Penny again. Once again, I felt the mixed pangs of wanting to stay with my friends longer and relax in comfort and the desire to draw myself ever closer to home. Once again, the road won. I talked to my friend Ben, with whom I would stay in Fort Wayne, near the Ohio border. Ben had contacted someone he knew at the local news station. I got a call from one of the producers who wanted to set up a time when I would be in Fort Wayne that I could be interviewed about my trip. I gave her a tentative time that I though I would make it, but said it would be best to contact me Sunday morning, when I'll have a better idea of when I'd hit the city 180 miles away.

Headed down the shaded but nearly shoulderless rural Illinois highway, I go south then swing east. It takes less than two and a half hours for me to traverse the 41 miles between Wilmington and the Indiana boarder. Again at this state line, there is no grand sign welcoming me to this most virtuous of states, just a small green rectangle notifying me of the county I was entering. Shrug. Maybe Indiana isn't the most virtuous state. The shoulder was only a couple feet wide here, and the heavy truck traffic picked up.

After a couple dozen miles of this, I turned off onto a single lane road that shot between corn fields. Going down the nearly empty road without shoulders, I took a break at a small bridge over a creek. Looking at the time and the map, I wanted to cover another 30 miles to get to the Tippecanoe State Park, where I could camp. At this point though, it is already after 7:00 and in less than two hours it will be dark. I quickly ate and then set out again.

I passed through more fields and small towns, covering miles, but not quite keeping the pace that I would need to make it to the park. There were a number of farmhouses I passed where I suddenly found myself being chased by dogs. None of them ended up catching me. As the sun set, I was still nearly 10 miles away from the park. Eventually, I saw a brightly lit sign in the distance that at first I took for a restaurant. As I had not had a real meal since breakfast, I thought that I should get a bite then continue in the dark to the park. As I got to it though, I could see that this structure was a church. Despite being 9pm on a Saturday, I could see that there were lights on in the building. I went around, trying to see if there was an unlocked door, and when I came around to the back, I found a janitor who was taking the trash out. I asked if it would be a problem for me to set up camp in a corner of the yard somewhere. He nodded and said it would be fine, so I set up off the back of the unpaved parking lot, between a small playground and the fence marking the boundary of a cornfield.

I sprayed myself down with insect repellent and pulled out one of my freeze-dried backpacker meals. Just add 2 cups of boiling water and wait 13 minutes and the food miraculously reconstituted itself into something that tasted more or less like the lasagna it promised. It was nice to have a hearty, hot meal and watch the fireflies flicker in the expanding darkness. There were sounds of fireworks in the distance, though I was never able to see any.


Day 58, Wilmington, IL - Bethel Churchyard Camp, West of Winamac, IN
92.2 miles in 6:53:47. Totals: 3527.7 miles in 276:51:49 and a high speed of 25.0 mph