6/14 – Well, today was an interesting day.

After yesterday’s long road walk, we were eager to get back on a nice forest trail, so decided to shortcut the Ice Age Trail map to avoid three more road walk days with no access to lodgings or provisions, and just get to the next town south.

So eager were we, that we stuck out our thumbs in an effort to get a ride to the next town instead of doing the long road walk. That’s when we met the sheriff, who hung a U-turn to find out what we were up to.

After running our driver’s licenses to make sure we weren’t escaped criminals on the run, he invited us into his squad car and offered to drive us to the county limits. How could we refuse?

I was hopeful that this generous offer would get us to the next town, but Jim knew better. Sure enough, the nice officer drove us out past the nuclear power plant and left us in the middle of nowhere. We had to walk several hours to get back on track, and then had to do more road walking to get to the Trail head.

Undaunted, we sallied into the forest, to meet our old friends, the mosquitos. Back on went the head nets, and on we went to what was billed as a lakeshore hike through Point Beach State Park. After several hours of hiking, we had seen many more bugs, no other hikers, lots of woods and no lake.

Turns out the map generated by the IAT folks bore little resemblance to the actual trail, and when we thought we were almost done, we still had many more miles to go. We’ve encountered errors on each of the maps used so far, and wonder how we can get more accurate info…

We finally crossed paths with a bicyclist who pointed the way out of the park, and actually followed to make sure we got out. Once on the road, a grizzled old Native American man picked us up and gave us a ride (finally!) into Two Rivers (pronounced by the locals as Trivers). Thankful for the kindness of strangers!

We ended up walking about 17 miles today, and I have the big blister to prove it.