Day 35. Hill City to Saginaw, 63 miles

OKAY. I’d like to open by acknowledging—thank you Josh, courtesy of mom telling us through our whole childhood—that under a tree is NOT the safest place to stand when there is lightning. I was hiding from rain, not lightning, since the latter didn’t seem to be striking close, but as my loving older brother points out, lightning tends to find high things. Like trees. So please enjoy my magical moment without emulating it. Thank you.

After all my concern about making the miles to meet Andrew, I’ve ended up a day ahead of schedule, and yesterday I did some rejiggering to give myself shorter days through Saturday. That, paired with a relatively mild headwind all day (grrr), means that I don’t need to be on the road at sunrise, so I set the alarm for 6 rolling my eyes at myself because I haven’t woken up later than 5:30 in weeks.

I wake up once at 2:30 to the muffled sounds of some fishermen calling it a night over by the boat launch. The next time I roll over it’s 5, and I’m ready to be up. I really have been sleeping better outside; I’m not sure why.

As I get up and go about my morning routine—ablutions, tent drying, putzing around—a pickup truck drives down to the beach. A portly older gentleman gets out and proceeds to go for a swim. A few minutes later an old car comes jouncing down the park road with a fishing pole attached to a special roof rig, and the driver installs himself at the end of the pier; I’m pretty sure it’s raingear guy from last night. What I’m trying to say is the people of Hill City love and use their lakefront park, and I am here for it.

I don’t roll out until around 8, giving the tent drying time and enjoying a leisurely morning. I stop briefly to take a picture of this sign I’d noticed on the way in.

The route is on a fairly quiet road for the morning. Googlemaps tries to put me onto an ATV trail, but I take one look at it and decide to chance the road; Joyce and I have suffered greatly through ATV trails before, and I don’t need suffering. My morning’s ride is mostly flat and low and damp, with abundant sturdy marsh grasses that barely rustle in the wind. The headwind, that is.

I plan for a little sit at the Jacobson roadside park, next to the Mississippi River, but when I get there it is a swampy and mosquito-infested Bad Place. It is also the terminus of the trail Googlemaps recommended, which makes me glad to have made the choices I did.

I stop on the bridge briefly for a shot of the Mississippi, not looking its grandest.

I’m back in familiar ditchweed territory now, with rabbitfoot clover and birds foot trefoil and spotted napweed galore.

Later in the day I cross the much more impressive-looking St. Louis River.

The flatness goes away and I start rolling again, because that is how it works. I’m still hanging around 1300-1350 feet, up and down and up and down. I’m kind of accustomed to it by now, and I have more equanimity than I used to. Maybe patience? Debatable, and probably not a judgement to be made without external observation and verification. But in any case, I see the hills coming and raise my eyebrows or mumble under my breath “oh really,” but unless it’s the end of the riding day and I’m over it, I mostly just do it without internal whining. To Jajah’s comment: yeah, my legs are kind of amazing machines right now—I’m so impressed with them and what they are proving capable of.

Late afternoon I roll into the Saginaw Park & Campground (not the chic Michigan Saginaw—the doesn’t-really-much-exist Minnesota Saginaw), and it is … fine. It’s right off US 2, sandwiched between freight train tracks and US 2, in fact. I can’t figure out the site numbering, and the camp host isn’t home, but none of the tent sites are taken, so I just grab one and and hang my tent on the clothesline for a good drying out before I set it up.

After relaxing for a bit, I set up the tent and get ready to shower, and as I’m trying to figure out how to get the bathroom code a younger couple drives up and gets out looking for the host. They have also reserved a site, but the one they reserved appears to be next to the host’s house, and they do not want this because they have a Bluetooth speaker and drinks planned. I am set up away from the host’s house, and the only possible sites are near me, and I am less than thrilled. We chat, and I let them know they should set up where they please, that I go to sleep early but can easily move my tent. The dude makes me a little edgy; he’s a bit rough looking, jittery, and overly friendly and talkative, and I am looking for a quiet night. Having gotten the bathroom code from a passing guest, I head in for a shower, and when I come out they have indeed set up one site over from me. I decide to move, and I let them know—friendly and accommodating, just don’t want to disturb their evening and I go to sleep so early—and dude offers to help me move my stuff, offers me a beer, is very nice. I decline the offers, but it’s really no sweat and I move with no animosity hoping it won’t be too loud.

My new site is also perfectly fine, and when the host rolls up I explain we’ve swapped sites around and he’s untroubled. I head back into the bathrooms for some device charging, and while I’m there the gal comes in and we chat for a bit. When I come out 20 minutes later, I find a pile of snacks on my picnic table: pistachios and jerky and Dot’s pretzels. I am touched and feel like a jerk, and I go over to thank them, and they’re all “you’re doing a thing and you need protein!” Good lord, people. They ask if the music is too loud, which it is not, and I head back to my tent for bed. I hear them once when I wake up in the middle of the night, maybe talking on the way to the bathroom, but they are no disturbance. Unlike the garbage truck that shows up at 3:30 but does not, mysteriously, actually empty the dumpster. File this one away under Maybe You Shouldn’t Automatically Be So Uptight, Sarah.