Garden Fun

I'll have to share the hiker statistics maybe tomorrow. I'm trying to get it right, and I didn't have that info already in my spreadsheet. I'm going back through the blog and figuring things out, but it's going to take a while.

Today, I continued the plan of working, alternating with gardening. The gardening is bringing me a lot of joy. This peony bush has never looked so good! I sure wish it wasn't pink, but I'll take any bit of color.

The purple globe bellflower, Campanula glomerata is also blooming. I really thought it would be all done by the time I got home, so this makes me pretty happy. There should be white ones too which always bloom later than the purple ones, but I don't see any buds. These were free from a surplus plant table years ago.

I did almost miss the spotted deadnettle, Lamium maculatum. This comes in a variety of leaf colors. In fact, I don't care a thing about the white flowers on this white-leaved plant. I grow it for the bright leaf color that loves shade. The thing is... it does better some years than others. I'd like to have it grow all around the base of the birch tree, but it keeps getting thin patches and then sending a runner out far away from the place I want it. This year, surprisingly, it's looking fairly good. I moved a couple of erring clumps back to where I want it. Honestly, it's only ever looked really good one year. But I keep trying. This came from the cemetery gully where someone had thrown it at the end of the season.

You can see it here beside the Heuchera I bought three weeks ago. I really like them together.

Interestingly, these plants are called deadnettle because the leaves look something like stinging nettles (not so much the spotted ones), but they don't have the stinging hairs, so they are "dead."

My border of tiny miniature hosta is sending up budding stalks. I may have identified it as Hosta venusta 'Tiny Tears.' The only reason I'm not sure is that the flowers on mine are darker purple than the pictures on line. That may not mean much. But there are SO many cultivars that it's hard to be certain. This was free from Ester and it is very happy. From a small puddle I now have about 10 feet of border along the front flower bed, and I even gave some to Betty. I'll show you that when it blooms.

The yellow mystery lily has three buds. One may be open tomorrow.

I also wrote another news article today.

See Support Group Thanks

Support Crew Thanks

It's going to be impossible for me to express enough thanks to the people who served as my support crew. I'll just try to mention them by order of time involved.

The support people who lived in the trailer with me had a big job. They had to get my breakfast, pack my lunch, and later, fix dinner. They had to deliver me to the trail and find and pick me up at an agreed-upon time and place. They had to do shopping, laundry, dishes, keep the trailer from turning into a complete pig sty, and any other tasks that popped up.

Sue Crawford from Baldwin was with me for just over 150 days divided into three segments. Of course she came with the two little canine charmers (not pictured here). This picture isn't even from this hike. Sue and I have been doing hikes, bike rides, and kayaking together ever since we met. We'd do more but we live just far enough apart that it's a little inconvenient. She drove me places in the UP in the winter that were probably technically inaccessible. And she enjoyed it! Sue also spent several days here in the month before the hike, helping to prepare food for the trip.



Next in time spent is my forever friend, Marie Altenau. She did about 60 days in two segments. We were jointly too tired to ever play our favorite game, but that's OK, she kept me on the trail. She took care of me through the flu-bug I caught somewhere. Usually she gets sick and I don't. This time we flipped it! And she got me through the spring trail sloppiness when it was mud, mud, mud everywhere.



Third on the list is, believe it or not, Omer! He did 36 days with me in the heat of North Dakota. He claims he likes heat, but... um... it was hot. There is nothing on that list of tasks above that he likes doing, but I'm here to tell you he did a fantastic job.



I also want to thank Michelle Olsen of Minnesota. She spotted me, and fixed dinners for me to eat for about two weeks, driving from her home every day. She preferred to do that. I didn't force her to drive that much!



Other helpers who stayed in my trailer with me for shorter time periods are Cindy Faust, Nancy Kowaleski, and Annie Nelson.

This list does not include people who actually hiked with me for full days. I'll remind you of them in another post.

I do want to mention Cathy Laman. You know that she and I hike together fairly often. Cathy couldn't go along on the trip, but she helped keep me focused on getting in shape before the hike. You may remember that she also helped with a lot of tasks to get the trailer ready in time. She was sort of my personal trainer. (She hiked a few days with me too, so maybe she should be in the next group of people, but... whatever. Actually, Sue and the pups often hiked in to meet me for a few miles at the end of the day and Marie always hiked out several miles with me in the mornings. So the categories get a little fuzzy anyway.) Cathy cheerfully comes over to help me out with real life tasks that I can't do alone- like when we had to take the soggy carpet out of the flooded basement in January.



On the home front- I did a little bit on each of my current projects just to try to get up to speed again. In between work sessions, I played in my flower beds. The afternoon got hot and uncomfortable, but the morning wasn't bad with a slight breeze. When it got too hot to be outside, I put the sprinkler on for a while and came inside and watched a movie. A robin came to the birdbath today. The picture is the Sedum sexangulaire blooming in the rock garden. Also appearing is the pink cranesbill. It's all a bit weedy, but hey... it's color.

Tomorrow: people who hiked with me for multiple days.

See True Blue Gumby II

Some Statistics from the Hike

I allowed myself a complete rest day today. The most strenuous thing I did was to fill the birdbath. It's really interesting to me that not a single bird visited it for the first three years I put it out. After they finally began to visit, it was obvious that the word got around, and birds came looking for it earlier this season. And this was after it was never put out last year at all.

Now that I'm pretty much home for the summer to keep it filled, I'll enjoy the visitors. This is an Eastern Phoebe.

Now for some number crunching about the hike. I had originally hoped to finish in 365 days. That requires an average of 13.2 miles per day with no breaks. Or, as I hoped, 4815/15 mpd = 321 days, which would give me 44 days off. Seemed like enough.

Ha! Actual hiking days... it took me 408 days to walk the trail. That is an average per hiking day of 11.8 miles. That's a lot less than I was trying for.

I also took more days off than I had planned on, logistics, weather, the flu, car trouble, blah, blah.

There are some circumstances that changed, but the truth is that although I put in some long mileage days (for me) at 18 miles, and a lot at 15, the short days just dragged down the average. Even as of Nov 11, 2022, before the snow began to take a toll, my average was only 12.4 miles. The ice storm in Ohio gave me nine days of single digit mileages. I did two shorter days after I was sick in April, until I regained full strength. The Kek and the Border Route were accomplished with almost all single digit days.

There is no way I can hike far enough on enough days to make an average recover from hits like that.

And then, once it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to hike the western UP until at least May, probably June, it became less important to me to keep the miles close to 15. The completion date wasn't going to happen until I could do those miles in the Trap Hills, so I did back off a little. The hike was taking a big toll on my body.

Although I managed to hike an amazing portion of the UP in winter, a lot of that was accomplished with single digit days.

True confession time. When I came home for a seasonal break at the end of December, I was really beat up. Even I did not realize how tired I was until I got home. Basically, I could hardly move for two months, let alone try to stay in shape for the rest of the hike. I wondered if I'd done some long-lasting damage to my joints.

But, hey! Solvitur ambulando, hiking cures everything. Maybe just moderated a little. Since there was no point in hiking long mileage days with a completion date in June set in stone (snow), I altered the plan and did a lot of days with shorter mileages. You may remember that at the end of March, Bill and I were hunting hard for any piece of trail or roadwalk that we could even hike.

So now, I've finished all the miles, all on foot, every inch... just not quite as fast as I had hoped. I'm disappointed, but not overly so. Physically, I feel great. The body healed, and I honestly don't feel any older than when I started.

I was joking in November, when the Dec 1 goal was definitely out, that I had better finish before I got to be 75. But that didn't happen either.

We are pretty sure that I am the oldest person at time of completion to hike the NCT. I may be the first person to do it twice. This has not been verified as there is another person who did at least large portions of it twice. None of these "records" is why I hiked it again. I really just wanted to see how much things had changed and to share it day by day with people.

Tomorrow- I'll thank a lot of people who deserve huge orchids, kudos, and praise.

My rest day included an unusual daytime nap. I was in one of those strange, catatonic dreams where I was dreaming that I was dreaming, but I knew it and couldn't wake up or even move my body parts. I was sleepwalking somewhere in Europe with my friends Bill and Phil and Nan trying to wake me up and not being able to. I kept falling flat on my face but it never hurt. If I knew what this meant other than that I guess I was tired, I'd tell you. Haha! Make of it what you will.

See The Final Steps

The Final Steps - Day 439

Eighteen months and eighteen days later. Link below to the beginning of this challenge.

I started from Centerline Road. Bill drew an NCT sign in the road!

I left exactly at 11:30 with four of us hiking. But we were joined by others in short order.

5.6 miles later, we had grown to a group of about 12 people who took the final steps with me into Timber Creek where I began this hike on Dec 1, 2021.

There, more members of the Spirit of the Woods Chapter of the NCTA, and some trail friends who actually drove quite a long distance to attend, celebrated my completion (at long last) of 4815 miles on the North Country Trail. I used this picture because it includes Chris Loudenslager (taking a picture on the left), the National Park Service Superintendent for the entire trail, who came to congratulate me. The people standing with me are those who were present who hiked more than 50 miles with me.

Bruce Micinski, president of the Lake County Historical Society, presented me with the first ever Andy Horujko award. He was a man from Lake County who walked from Alaska to the tip of South America in the 1970s. What fun!

After some introductions and stuff, the party moved to the cabin of SPW members, Barb and Scott. We enjoyed a delicious meal. Lots of salads! Made me happy. Lots more visiting with long-time and new trail friends.

Today I'm just sharing the feel-good completion story. Over the next couple of days I'll do a bit of debriefing of statistics I kept and thanking some people without whom the hike would not have been possible.

Miles today: 5.6. Total miles so far: 4815.0. Miles to go: 0

But, today, I'm ending with a benediction that I did not write, but I wish I had. I've been saving this most of the year to share with you. It reads, "May the quiet fire of God's love arise within you. May its flames of joy and peace enlighten your steps in this world, and may you be like the burning bush, the presence of God for each other, that holy healing light of love, the breath of God made manifest in you."

Most of you know I'm a person of faith, a follower of Jesus. It has been one of my great desires to share this wonderful trail with you, and I know that many of you have found an appreciation for a pathway you knew little about. But it has also been one of my great desires to be like the burning bush, to be a small presence of God to you. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

See Lake to River See Days 1-5

Botany Day

I promised flowers today, and you sure are going to get them. But these visitors were just outside my door this morning. I'm sure they will be happy to eat my plants, so it's sort of related.

These are in no particular order. I did try to pick ones that are not seen all the time, or that might benefit from some explanation. Mostly these are higher quality plants, with one BAD one.

This is Labrador Tea, Rhododendron groenlandicum, a shrub. The coefficient of conservatism (CC) is 8, which means it requires a rather specialized habitat to grow. The numbers range from 0 to 10, and 10 would be the most rare. Interestingly enough, this is a obligate wetland plant, however, we saw a lot of it growing on the sandy higher ground between wet pools. It did look rather stressed there. Yes, the leaves are used to make tea.

Another obligate wetland plant is Bog Laurel or Pale Laurel, Kalmia polifolia. This is only the second time I've ever seen this, although it supposedly often grows near the Labrador Tea. This is a very cool find, because its CC is 10... the highest you can get.

More on the woodland/upland side of the plant equation is Wild Sarsaparilla, Aralia nudicaulis. If you've been in the woods much, you've probably seen it. It's prevalent in northern hardwood forests, but its CC is not shabby, at 5. The leaves are more noticeable, with the flowers beneath the leafy "canopy."

Another upland species, fairly common, but also with a CC of 5, is False Solomon's Seal, or False Spikenard, Maianthemum racemosum. This used to be in a different Genus (Smilacina), but DNA testing puts it with another Maianthemum I'm sure most of you know, the small Canada Mayflower, with its small upright stalk of white flowers.

Another common flower of rich woodlands is Clintonia borealis, sometimes called Corn Lily. It is supposedly found near where I live, but not in the profusion of the Upper Peninsula and New York. CC is 5.

Also common, although most people think it's quite rare, is the Pink Lady Slipper, Cypripedium acaule. It will grow everywhere from wet to dry in terms of moisture, but always in acid soil. Also a CC of 5.

Now we'll do two upland species. The first is Horse Gentian or Wild Coffee, Triosteum aurantiacum. I'm not actually sure if I've seen this one before or its "sister," Triosteum perfoliatum. I'll have to hunt down some old pictures to be sure. Even then, the species intergrade, so... It's a tall plant, another with CC of 5. They are both listed as upland plants, and this one was, but I've seen a LOT of these in flood plains. It gets two pictures, because I can't show the leaves and the flower in one picture. The maroon flowers grow right in the leaf axils. These produce orange berries that can be roasted as a coffee substitute.

Oddly enough, the above plant is a relative of the honeysuckles, and it was growing with a honeysuckle. Actually, surprisingly, not an alien one. This is Glaucous or Red Honeysuckle, Lonicera dioica. The flowers range from yellow to red. The CC is only 5 again, but I don't think I'd seen this one before.

It's interesting to me that I've seen this plant more often than a lot of the others, yet its CC is 7. It's an obligate wetland plant, Purple Avens, Geum rivale. The leaves are the broad ones down on the lower right.

Another obligate wetland species is the Lance-leaved Violet, Viola lanceolata. This was my one good find from Big Lake. I have seen it before, but not often. The tall leaves are some sedge. The violet leaves are shorter, but they are very narrow. CC is 8. Very high quality plant.

I'm ending with a really bad plant. This is an invasive species. It was EVERYWHERE in Vermont, and I was dismayed to see it in the UP. It is False Chervil, Anthriscus sylvestris. It looks very much like Poison Hemlock, but smaller and without the spotted stems. The leaves are dark green and fern-like, just like the Hemlock. The stalks are striated, but I didn't get a good picture of that.

If anyone other than Betsy has stuck with me this far, I commend you! If you just came for the pictures, that's fine too.

In other news, I did laundry, went shopping, and mowed a chunk of the lawn. Not bad. Bill is here for the night, and tomorrow we head to the trail for the FINAL MILES!

See Peter Wolfe Chapter Fun