Faux Islands

Night 1 was awesome.
Thanks, everyone, for voting on my first evening out. It really was everything I hoped it would be, and it now fuels my excitement for tonight. I am so stoked to be doing this....waking up every day, knowing I have another adventure in waiting within the next 12 hours.

Sooo....last night. With less-than-stellar memories of my last tent experience in the rain, hail, snow, and thunderstorms 6 weeks ago in VT, I set out. I overpacked my Osprey with waaay more clothing than I needed and hopped on the bike. It would be a rainy, wet, 15-ish mile ride to the island I hoped to stay on.

Had a sweet tailwind all the way into Washburn, where I took a left on Gardner Creek Road. It started as pavement, but quickly turned to dirt and mud.
Although terrible for my bike, I have to admit... riding a dirt road on a road bike is probably one of my favorite things in the world. Bad part is, by the time I arrived at the "island", I was covered head to toe in light brown mud. I used one of my many pieces of extra clothing to towel off the caked up mess on my legs.
I put "island" in quotation marks, because as I stepped foot on it, I realized that it was just a lot of rocks with tall grass growing on it. The river still ran through it. Since it was impossible to camp on, I set up on the first good spot by the road that I could see. Daylight was done, and I wanted to get established.

A couple of sketchy vehicles went by around 11, which I didn't expect. This road was really rough, and ended only a half mile away. What were they doing out here? The first car stopped 20 yards past my tent for about 10 minutes. Thinking of the recent Amity murders(killer still on the loose), I watched, waiting for them to exit their vehicles in a rampage with their axes and hack me to death. Luckily, there was no encounter, but I did know this: they had to come back through sometime! I didn't really sleep until both cars came back through around 11:30 or so...After that, I zonked out HARD.

Woke up at 5am, packed up, and was on the road 45 minutes later.

I took my time coming back into Presque Isle...stopping at the Washburn Foodmart for some Nutrigrain bars and some coffee, and stopping to take some pictures of the amazing display of Lupines out on Parsons Road. Unfortunately, the light was very low, and the camera couldn't quite capture it the way I hoped.

Thanks again, for voting. You gave me an awesome experience!
Tonight, I'll be hiking/running somewhere....not staying on the side of a road, waiting to get killed.

Have a great day!
krp