A Favorite Puddle - Day 223

  One of the things I like best about walking through communities is getting to enjoy nice flower gardens. These are some beauteous delphiniums in Cooperstown.

At the other end of town was a nice array of old-fashioned single hollyhocks.

And in between there was a cafe and I treated myself to a BLT for lunch!

This post is a rather miscellaneous collection of things from today, but I named the post for this. Not all of the road walks have been the same as before, but this one has remained, and I'm glad. I love this! The county roads are laid out in the Street-Avenue grid of mile squares, but sometimes the water doesn't cooperate. I think this pond is not so ephemeral. I love how the road has to detour around it. When Marie and I hiked this section in 2007, we sat down and ate one of our snacks here just to enjoy the beauty.

The next obstruction, however, had the potential to be a problem. I was just 3 miles from where Om was going to meet me. I'd already sent him the pickup time. Then there was a road closed sign. But I could see that the reason was only about a half mile ahead. A quick look at the map showed that to walk around this would have been a serious issue. The shortest alternate route was 9 miles instead of 3. I figured it was worth the half-mile walk to check it out.

A crew was preparing to put in a new culvert, and they were doing a lot of bulldozer work. But I asked if I could walk through, and they said yes. Whew! But they could hardly believe I was walking. There was no standing water, and it was an easy traverse of a construction site.

Today's lonely North Dakota picture is a working farm across the fields.

And now, I have to sign off. I still have some prep to do for my program tomorrow evening in Valley City.

Miles today: 17.3. Total miles so far: 2702.6 (Over 2700!)

See Pink