Ed, the owner of the Tomorrow Wood Campground, is an awesome person. He ended up circling back around to our campsite about an hour after first dropping us off. This time, Ed had cold pop and water for us. His family has owned the campground since the 1970s when they moved away from the hustle and bustle of Milwaukee. The campground itself has to be over 100 acres and is next to the fully fish stocked Fish Lake. Half the campground has been cleared for tent camping sites while the other half has seasonal RVs and tiny homes under CCC pines trees.
Of all the people we have met, Ed laughed the most and the loudest. Thank you for everything, Ed!
Last night was hard. When even pizza does not refill your health bar to 100%, your party is in trouble. It still felt like I was walking when I closed my eyes at night. A very similar feeling to when I close my eyes after I’ve been on a boat fishing all day and it still feels like I’m on the water. Sleep came to me fast and the morning came faster.
With Ed driving us to the trail at 0800, we were able to set our alarms to later than normal and sleep in to 0630. The morning alarm went off right around the same time the thunder started. It doesn’t take a big storm to get our attention. We hopped out of the tent, broke camp down and ran our gear to a nearby pavilion for breakfast and coffee. Our real motivation for the fast action was to keep the tent dry, the campground trees kept us dry from the morning dew and keeping gear dry was worth the effort.
Breaking camp down was the last thing we did quickly today. Exhaustion from last night carried over to this morning. We were suffering from a plague of fatigue that no sugar or caffeine could cure. Humidity for today was at 100%, this did not help.
Even with the worn down bodies and dire mental states, we managed to find some luck today. A hiker from Alabama, Emily, passed us while on a break yesterday, she let us know she would be in the area for another day or so and gave us her number in case we need anything. She passed us again today, we always seem to be on a break when we meet people, and it reminded us that we need a ride into Coloma today or be doomed to a 4 mile road walk in. Emily was good to her word and drove us into town. The ride ended our day earlier than planned, neither of us had a problem with that.
Coloma is bigger than Scandinavia, Wi type town, though still very small. Our hotel didn’t open for another hour so we headed over to a rundown laundry mat to wash some clothes. The biggest riddle we had left for the day was figuring out how to get a ride back to the trail in the morning. Our riddle ended up being an easy one, I asked the hotel co-owner, Dennis, if there were any cans around and he asked his wife, the other co-owner, if she would drive us out at 0700.
Friday is fish fry day at the local Cabin Bar & Grill, something we could not say no to. We need a good night sleep to help counter balance how much tomorrow is going to suck. If the forecast is correct, we will be road walking 16 miles in the rain.
Chicka & Sunsets might be bringing us trail magic on the road today! A light at the end of a very wet and stormy tunnel 🙂