100 Miles for Monica

 It was an awesome day for Monica. She wasn't sure she was going to have enough time free from work/family to finish her Hike 100 for the year. But we managed to pull it off today. See the "100" in the snow?

The day... well, the day was even busier than yesterday, believe it or not. I managed to edit a little bit in the morning. But then I had to do errands. Monica picked me up after lunch and we went to check on a venue for an upcoming chapter event. We planned to take a short hike after that.

But she only had to do five miles to complete her 100 for the year! So we decided to try for it. I was the one with the deadline. I had to be back for bell choir practice.

Monica has been so swamped with work we haven't had really any time together lately, so this was great fun!

We managed to hike 5 trail miles, 0.5 spur trail miles, clear 7 or 8 smallish trees off the trail by brute force, take locations for another 6 that someone will have to come get with a saw-- all in 2.25 hours. And we got done before the rain started, and I got to bells on time!

We hiked as far as the new turnpike section that was completed in August. It made a great goal for us to shoot for. It's looking good. Next spring will be the real test. This area is usually a mess in spring.

And after bell choir I had a zoom meeting for another hour.

Next stop, bed with a book or a game.

Miles hiked in 2024: 543.8. NCT miles hiked in 2024: 165.5

North Country Trail, Lake Co, MI. Bowman Trailhead south to Rainbow Bend and back. 5.5 miles

See Loren Gets 100 Miles See Young Volunteers

Rollin' in the Sunshine - Second 2021 Interior Tour

  What a beautiful ending to Sunny's final day of preparation for this trip.

The cushions were all finished two days ago, and they look as nice as I had hoped. I bought that little rug at the last minute because the floor was so cold, and it helps a lot. Looks good too. The little heater keeps the interior nice and warm.

If you are wondering what that funny wooden thing is on the floor, it's the piece that allows me to make the entire bench space into a bed. Here's what the whole space looks like made into a bed. A regular double-bed fitted sheet is perfect to unite the space into a sleeping area.

Here's a view of the kitchen area again, with everything except the coffee pot, which I'll take out there in the morning.

Monica says she's ready to play hooky and run off with me. (Sorry I caught her blinking.)

Just a look at the table area from a different angle.

The storage area of the kitchen.

And finally, what we hope may be the solution to too many loose shoes on the floor. It's all fastened with Command Strips, so if it doesn't work, it can come down without damage.

Stacy came and helped me all afternoon, and then Monica came after work and helped for several more hours. I just have to go out and stow things in the trailer for travel, but that doesn't take long. With their help, all the extra details got taken care of, and things are put in their places. I spent ALL morning making a few phone calls and doing the last round of errands. This took until 1 pm! But I did get them all done.

And the list? I got the last 3 BIG ITEMS done. OK, so I dropped 5, but nevertheless, I have done 57 major projects (defined as needing more than one day to complete) in the past 75 days. Most of the little ones are done. I sort of quit counting. A few can go on the road with me. Not ideal, but workable. A few are just out of luck.

Teeny is packed, and as you may have seen on Facebook, weighs 28 pounds fully loaded with 5 days of food, and 1 day of water. I'm really happy about that. All my clothes for tomorrow are stacked up. The house is semi-restored... OK, there's just less chaos, but there is only 1 extra table set up in the living room instead of 4. That has to count for something, right? The dining room is hopeless, but it's been that way for 5 years... what's one more?

I need to decompress for a bit, stow the gear in Sunny for travel, and then take a shower before bed. I'll be on my way in the morning! Sunny is being delivered to his first stop on the next day. I haven't yet gotten my head around the magnitude of this. And remember... if I don't blog tomorrow, it only means I don't have any cell service. There are no cliffs for me to fall off of just yet!

See First 2021 Interior Tour

Shout Out to the Pre-Hike Supporters

  There are three people who have been on my local pre-hike support team for many months. They've helped me more than they probably realize just by being, well... supportive.

You know that Sue came and helped with food two days. She's also going to be on the road with me for more time than probably anyone else. So, you'll hear lots more about her.

However, these three people are not going along on the trip, but each of them committed to keeping me motivated with the hiking earlier (actual preparation sort of overwhelmed that), and helping in various ways. Not in any particular order:

Loren hired me to do all that painting for her in the spring. She was in on the "secret" plan, even then, and she paid me full price to do that job. This financed a lot of the preparations. Her husband, Dave, is also in the picture.

Cathy also learned of my plan in the spring. She can't really take off to go along with me, but you know we've done a lot of hiking together this year. She's helped with a lot of work on the trailer, and added an extra brain to sorting out planning issues when two heads were definitely better than one. She's going to hike with me on day one, and she and her husband will deliver Sunny to the first spot where I am staying in the trailer.

Monica came into the loop later than those two, because I didn't meet her until this summer. But we quickly hit it off big time. We've hiked together, and she's helped with food and sewing and the trailer. She's also helped me figure out solutions to remaining issues. She'll hike with me on day 2 and 3. See, I've got insurance that I won't be quitting right out of the starting block. And, she JUST NOW brought me something that will provide a solution for yet another storage issue. We may be a similar kind of crazy... kinda scary!

I also want to say a big-time thanks to Omer. He really doesn't like the house to be a mess, and the poor guy married the Queen Mess-Maker. I'm not kidding when I say that I've outdone myself in trashing the place this time. With two days to go, I'm entering clean-up and put-away modes, but with ONLY two days to go, it's not going to be great when I leave. Also, he has run to the store when I needed some stray item, and he is going to be my support person for one month. That's definitely out of his comfort zone, so I really appreciate it. Here we were on Veteran's Day. It's a nice picture, so I'll use it.

Of course, I have to mention Marie, because we talked on the phone often, working out trailer details, since she has more trailer time than anyone except me. And she's my 100%, wind-beneath-my-wings, support person.

And there are a number of people who have prayed with me as I am getting ready to leave, and some who have committed to pray for me every single day. This means an awful lot to me, and I know it will help keep me going on the days that are less fun- there are bound to be some.

In other news: I finished everything I can do for now on the 2021 tax accounts. BIG ITEM. I finished the trailer cushions. BIG ITEM. I made one more pair of hiking pants for me. BIG ITEM. All the plants are gone. The trailer table is re-installed, and I'm getting things put away in their spaces and packing.

8 BIG ITEMS to complete, with almost certainly 5 of them to be dropped (54 done). 2 small items done that were on the list; tons more small ones to do, but some can be done after we are on the road- I just don't want to forget about them (71 done). 2 days to go. It's getting real.

See Letting the Secret Out of the Bag

Piping with Monica

  Today's primary focus was to make a start on the trailer cushions. We also managed to do some other things too. No we weren't doing plumbing, or playing the hornpipe, or even a tin whistle. We started by making the piping trim for the cushion edges.

Somehow, I found this hilarious. Monica was pressing open the seams on the tape we'd just made, and as soon as there was a long enough tail to reach the machine, I started sewing the bias tape around the cord at the sewing machine.

End result: 43 yards of piping for the cushions nicely coiled in this basket, ready for use.

We also got 4 of the 8 zippers for the cushions done, added 2 coats of polyurethane to the plywood in the kitchen (just one more to go before bed tonight- I did one this morning as soon as I got up), sorted the backpacking food into tubs by location (One tub that goes in the trailer right away, one that Sue brings in March, and one that will somehow go west with me later- and we also found and had to fix a counting error I had made), transferred a volunteer project to Monica's keeping (so I get to cross off a BIG ITEM), and discussed some other trail logistics. Oh... and made a decision about something in the trailer kitchen. I think we made some great progress! I get to cross off a couple of small items, but I had to add a few more.

Now 24 BIG ITEMS to complete- (38 done). 42 small ones to do (34 done). 16 days to go.

Oh! And this happened- first snow.

See Almost Food

My Trailer Redo - Days 173-175 - Kitchen Walls

  Today was packed to the gills! First, let me tell you that I do get to cross off one BIG ITEM from my list, and it's the next step in the trailer. I finished the backsplash walls of the kitchen area.

First of all, I was determined to overcome the problem that made the back window so difficult to fit wall board around. The windows are at an angle to the walls, and that angle is out at the bottom and in at the top. So my solution was to build a frame that brings the trailer walls around the window back to vertical (as close as I could get- more on that later). This created a little window sill. Might be useful... might not... it will be behind the curtains.

I also needed to move the electrical outlet, because hotplate cords are short. Just annoying, since I had thought I had that all planned. Oh well, no real biggie.

I decided to use FRP board (fiberglass reinforced plastic) for the wall because it is so flexible. Here is the first try at dry fitting the cut piece into the space. It looks better than it was.

Then I guess I just got focused on dealing with all the things that didn't go right because I didn't take any more pictures until I was done. But I will tell you that the whole project got held up big time because I discovered that I had to do everything I needed to do on this closet wall before I could proceed. We'll talk more about the closet in another installment of this saga. But, as you can see in this picture, it also has an electric outlet mounted in it. That has been planned all along.

There were many, many dry fittings to get the board cut just right and the window and outlet openings in the right places. There was the usual placing small, odd framing pieces, and adding foam insulation where I could, and filling shallow gaps with fiberglass batting.

As it turned out, I had to cut the FRP board into two sections anyway. The final wall was just a tiny bit not "flat," and with going around the curve I had to cut it so it wouldn't buckle. That actually worked out fine. You can see one of the problems in the upper corner by the closet wall. The fact that the corner of the FRP had to bend there threw the opening for the window out of square.

The subway tile is stick-on sheets. Mounting them had a little more of a learning curve than I anticipated. Since I was only doing a small area, I was almost done before I really got it figured out. So it's not as perfect as I would like, and even so, the wall wasn't perfectly square, so I had to fudge things a tiny bit, but it's pretty good. It needs to have trim around the edges which will help it look better, but that's not happening before this trip.

And I had to break down and put some screws on the top side. I was hoping to glue the FRP to the framing. But the whole issue of fastening the stuff down ended up being a question of weighing all the pros and cons. If I glued it in, then it was there permanently, without option to remove it easily, if necessary. But as it turned out, the wall was just not consistently vertical enough, and I realized there was going to be too much torque on the board, and I'd need to screw it.

So then, I wanted to put the screws under the subway tile stickers, so nothing would show. But then, if I needed to remove the wall later, I would sacrifice a tile sheet to get to the screws. Also, the FRP board is a bit brittle, and I can believe the vibrations of towing the trailer might make the screw heads break through. Also, the screw heads left bumps under the fake tile sheets. In the end, I compromised. I screwed the board under the tile near the windows, and put a few screws with trim washers through all the layers. You can see three of the screws in the next picture.

I'm pretty happy. It definitely needs trim... but that will give me something to do in a couple of years, right?

And, AND! Today was a totally get-'er-done day. Monica came over at 8:30 this morning and stayed all day helping with food.

We worked together all morning and packaged up a gazillion (actual number) of meals and snacks.

In the afternoon, I finished the trailer kitchen walls, and Monica mixed and packaged up 127 trail shakes! Yippie!! THANK YOU, MONICA.

There is no other news, but I get to cross off one of the BIG ONES- the trailer kitchen walls, and I also managed to do one small thing. 27 BIG ITEMS to do (35 done), and 33 small ones to do (21 done). 26 days to go.

See Kitchen Countertop

Dragon Trail Beginnings

  Nice hike today with Monica and her daughter Keira.

The last time I went to Hardy Dam was because the 46-mile "Dragon Trail" was in the planning stages. Now there are actually some miles completed.

There are 14.6 miles, but they are not contiguous. So we did most of what is complete, and one little piece of that as an out-and-back. We did get a nice early start from my house, but it's over an hour away. Nevertheless it was still a lovely morning at the boat launch as we were getting ready to hike.

The trail is designed for mountain bike and hiking use. That means there are lots more twists and turns and small hills than you'd usually find on a hiking trail.

Most of the day was cloudy, but occasionally the sun popped out giving some good autumn color. You can see the water most of the time from the trail.

You know I love patterns. This was the best one on the water today.

We started from a park called Big Bend and walked toward the dam. We knew we were getting close here, but actually had over a mile to go because the trail wandered around an arm of water.

One more view with some nice color.

And at the end we walked across the dam and back. This is the view downstream on the Muskegon River.

We did 13.2 miles, and I can feel it, but I could easily have walked 2 or 3 more. This is really good. The weather was ideal. We think it was 39 degrees when we started, but most of the time it was high 40s or into the 50s. Lots and lots of cyclists. A moderate number of hikers.

Dragon Trail from Big Bend Park to Consumer's Beach Park and back to parking. 13.2 miles

There is no other news.

See Hardy Dam

Albert, Bruno, Cuthbert, Dexter, Ernest, Franklin

  Monica and I hiked together today. You know I love silly trail games and she taught me a new one. We took turns naming the toads we saw alphabetically. We saw 6 of them and arbitrarily decided they were all boys. I did A,C,E. Monica did B,D,F. This is Franklin. Can you see him? I think Albert was the largest.

We went from 96th St to Highbanks Lake and back on the North Country Trail. That's a really pretty stretch, and I wanted to see what the small wetlands looked like at this time of year. The answer is that there is water, but it's not as clear and extensive as in the spring. No surprise there.

And, I learned a new plant- so this makes it a STELLAR day. This is Swamp Thistle, Cirsium muticum. This is a really attractive thistle, and it's not as prickly as many of the common species. The calyx is blue-tinged with an interesting pattern. Can't believe I did not know this one.

We also caught Rattlesnake Weed in bloom, Hieracium venosum. It's just a kind of hawkweed, and its best feature is the maroon veins in the leaves. But I rarely catch one flowering, so now you have it.

Highbanks is always a pretty destination. Today was no exception. I usually prefer my water blue, but the silvery color today made the water really stand out from the trees.

Did we have a good time? We sure did. Ten miles.

North Country Trail miles for 2021 is at 370.

In other news: I worked a bit on the trailer. Monica helped me do one thing! Not much sleep last night- who knows why? Tomorrow- full steam ahead.

North Country Trail, Newaygo County, 96th St to Highbanks Lake and back, 10 miles

See Hiking with Denali