Day Five: cedar Valley Campground to Janda’s. 11 miles
On the go at 7am.
It’s rail trail with pleasant fall wildflowers and a bit of river for a while, then it’s roadwalk in wide open farmland. The temps are cool, and I’m happy. I try to walk on grass when I can to protect my joints from the asphalt. Lots of corn, rural homes, dogs barking behind closed doors, silos. A bit of high speed traffic, too.
I deviate from the suggested connecting route and go to Janda’s in Ellisville. Hikers have made notes on FarOut about the hospitality of this place, and it does not disappoint. The bar has been in the Janda family since 1909, Chris the bartender tells me. He and his parents live above the establishment. They have a massive and gorgeous field in which they allow hikers to camp. I order cheese curds (yum!) and chili and eat while charging my electronics.
An older guy at the bar asks what I am doing and I tell him about the Ice Age Trail. He is flabbergasted and doesn’t understand why anyone would want to hike that far. 🙂
I set up camp before the dinner crowd arrives. It’s my first time cleaning up outside with no privacy, but I do my best inside my tent.
For some reason I thought my hike today would be 15 miles, but it ended up being only 11. That’s okay, my body doesn’t mind.
I really need a good night’s sleep, and a muscle in my right upper leg, one of those you don’t realize you have until it starts to hurt, aches badly. Many hikers have a nightly routine of Tylenol. I don’t have that, but I do have some non-opioid muscle relaxers from when I threw out my back a month or so ago. I take one at 6:30pm and fall asleep shortly thereafter. Except for one brief pee break at 9:15pm, I sleep ten hours straight.
Day Six: 14 miles. Janda’s to Weber Woods DCA.
I’m up at 4:30 and begin the laborious task of packing up a very wet tent. It didn’t rain overnight, but one thing about sleeping in the middle of a grassy field when it’s chilly outside is that the inside gets wet from condensation while the outside gets wet from dew. I carefully move everything from inside my tent to Jandas’ gravel parking area to better keep everything dry while sorting my stuff. I take down and pack the tent last and plan to dry it at some point during the day.
I’m on “trail” at 6:40am.
The morning’s long road walk is scenic and cool. The miles fly by. Cornfields and country homes and wildflowers and fields and cows. Since it’s in the upper 40s/low 50s and overcast, I zoom along feeling fine.
I see a dad and his young son (no older than eight) each slowly riding his own ATV. The kid waves happily at me, I wave back.
There’s a water source by a bridge that other hikers have called sketchy, but I climb down and filter some. It tastes fine.
Eventually I get to the dreaded Tisch Mills segment. I say dreaded because notes from previous hikers call it completely overgrown with six-foot tall vegetation. One person even calls it “hell.” I get there mentally prepared to tackle it, thinking it can’t be any worse than some of the White Mountain trails I tackled during my redlining/tracing days. Happily, this segment isn’t a big deal. There is six-foot tall vegetation, but there’s also a clear trampled down footpath through it. I have experienced far worse. The other hikers must not have had the good fortune of other people’s recent trampling when they did this bit.
One short roadwalk after that takes me past a post office and a bar, then I am in the Weber Woods Segment.
A wooded trail!! The first of my hike! It’s beautiful! Until now, it has been 100% rail trail and roads.
Home of the evening is my first DCA campground. Those are for multi-day Ice Age backpackers only, and they are free. It’s a lovely area by a creek. Plenty of space.
Oops! I forgot to dry my tent during the day. It’s only 11am and there are plenty of sunny spots in the woods. I spend the next three hours chasing sunlight with my tent and ground cloth, hanging my gear over various branches. While the sun does its job, I eat, wash up, change, and charge my electronics with my Anker.
Some hikers go slower and spend most of their day hiking. I have a quick pace and prefer to arrive at my destination as soon as my natural pace allows, then spend the rest of the day enjoying my home for the evening. Weber Woods was a lovely place to spend my afternoon and evening hours. Nice stream, breezes blowing through the trees, birds flying overhead. It’s very close to town so you can hear cars, but it is still fairly quiet.
I sleep fairly well (without the use of muscle relaxers this time), though I do toss and turn a little due to some lower back pain.
