Wild camping here we come!
/Jul 23 - Glidden WI to River camp on Namekagon River near Springbrook WI: 67.4 miles
We survive our lonely free camping in Marion park in Glidden. Cooking coffee and breakfast on the counter-height stage is a treat.
Our target today: get to the bike shop in Hayward to get Heather's front wheel trued. There's a very popular (and expensive!) KOA near Hayward which we'll stay at if we can't find anything else.
There are very few turns today, and the map looks like we're going to be on lots of straight roads through farmland.
It's time for some extra entertainment: I am going to finally try out a Spanish course that I downloaded some time back. The initial long straight roads are met with a string of Spanish that crescendos at "Quiciera he reservacion una mesa para su madre" before I do not have sufficient concentration or time to construct the more complex sentences that the voice is demanding of me. I can't keep stopping and rewinding, AND I think I missed some essential parts during the downhill sections, where all I can hear is the wind. Still, I feel that I've accomplished something this morning and I might try some more.
The first town I pass is just in time for an early lunch. I'm starving. Heather pulls up with a flat tire, that occurred just across the street. She fixes that while I watch and eat in some shade behind a busy gas station convenience store.
After lunch, I'm in a total food coma. I can't put together compound sentences in Spanish anymore at all.
The road surfaces are terrible. I've decided to call this a "touring day": slow and steady through winding roads with lakes left and right, and a nice up-and-down tour past expensive lake-side homes.
I reach Hayward to battle road construction traffic, and its super hot. I pull off for ice cream and a water bottle fill-up at the site of a lumberjack competition! LOL.
Hayward lumberjack competition - log rolling competitors getting ready! I didn't buy admission so I'm peaking through the trees
I head to the New Moon bike shop, where all that I really need is a cleat screw. I am also having some knee trouble - my cleat position is still not quite dialed in. I hang out at the bike shop like a groupie, asking for advice on whatever I can think of. I'm really waiting for Heather to arrive, which eventually starts to look like might not happen in time for them to do any repair-work before the shop closes. The owner and/or manager is a star - he gives me all kinds of valuable advice and some gear, including the cleat screw, deer-fly patches, and some shims to put in my shoes that will slightly change my foot angle and hopefully ease some knee pain. I get camp alternatives to the KOA from him as well, and one of the mechanics.
Heather pulls in at 15 minutes before shop close, and they still take care of her! Heather is not happy about it, but she relents to my desire to use one of the free primitive camp options that I got from at the bike shop. I let Heather rest while I shop at the Hayward grocery store, which includes a bulk food aisle (hooray!).
I rescue Heather from the hot ground outside the store for the final push 10 miles to camp down a busy road with a detritus-filled and sometimes very small shoulder, headed into the setting sun. On the good side, there's not really much traffic.
Our recommended "wild camp" is a boater pull-out & camp run by the National Park Service, with toilets but no water. We have to filter water for dinner and drinking - our first chance to use the filter that we've been carrying all the way from Boston. Getting water also allows me take a dip in the beautiful crystal clear stream.
Thank you to the great staff at New Moon bike shop in Hayward.