This hike was East Fork State Park in Ohio (and a little more on each end). I had a lot of it written already, but as I said in the post linked below I was having trouble making it work. The problem was that although these first two hikes connected geographically, they were separated by several days, were different in character, and needed to be two different chapters. Now I've got it sorted out!
Here's how it starts:
Deb is excited about backpacking together. She is a friend from the Spirit of the Woods Chapter of the North Country Trail Association, our home chapter in Michigan. The NCTA works to build, protect and promote the trail, and there are thirty chapters along its length. Thousands of volunteers donate millions of hours to keep the pathway in good shape. But, to my knowledge, usually in the daytime.
Debbie meets me in Williamsburg, Ohio. We take my car to Batavia and I ride my bike back to Williamsburg. Deb sits outside a grocery store and waits for me to return. I recently asked her how she spent the time. “I read War and Peace, helped an old lady cross the street, and started writing a novel based on our hike,” she said.
Dang, that must be the slowest I ever rode eight miles in my life!
I ask permission to lock my bicycle to a post outside the store for the days until we return. Of course they won’t take any responsibility, but at least I can be fairly sure they won’t have the lock cut and take the bike to the police station as abandoned.
We adjust packs, distribute the shared parts of the load and set off for East Fork State Park. After only two miles we find our first obstacle, the East Fork of the Little Miami River. The map assures us it’s usually shallow but has very slippery rocks. We switch to sandals and carefully ford the wide waterway. Neither of us takes a dunking, but it’s always amazing to me how long it takes to walk a couple hundred feet under difficult circumstances.
We soon join the Perimeter Trail of the park, and the map informs us that the trail “meanders and undulates generally, more-or-less...” Deb and I have a laugh at the terminology, but we should only consider ourselves forewarned.
In other good news, the local bookstore took six sets of my Dubois Files children's mysteries today.
See Too Fast at Car Speed- chapter 1
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