I decided to push on today and skip a camp and make it to Wildcat Den State Park in Iowa by 6pm. Just 10 minutes behind schedule, with 498 miles under our tires, and just two miles short of our goal, i slammed on the brakes, did a u turn, and pulled into an absolutely wonderful camp right on the Mississippi. I guess i missed it last year because it was dark when i pulled in to Wildcat. I was hoping to get to Wildcat to revive some memories of my one-night stay there exactly one year ago tonight. You can read about it on last year's blog. There is a sad epilog to that story which i will write about when i have time.
As readers of my blog know, i cannot apologize for the typos, grammatical errors and the like. There simply is no time on the road to pay attention to those finer points of composition. Also, as i have written before, if the contents of blogs vary on a scale of one to ten, from the mundane to the profound, mine hover at about the 1.5 level. In fact, anything profound that emerges from these experiences shows up after i get back home, sometimes long after, but they do emerge.
In the latter regard, i just read my journal from last year and saw that i set out 12 goals to reach when i returned. I accomplished not a single one, and explained the reasons for that earlier. Despite that abysmal failure on my part, i will continue that exercise on this trip and hope to do better. However, that having been said, i have no regrets as to how i spent my time. But i do regret that i had to spend my time as i did, and i suspect a few others feel the same way.
I think i hit the stride of the trip today. Fewer mistakes are being made, the daily chores are no longer onerous, and i have accepted the fact that this is how i shall spend the next 42 days. Donner never accepts that.
Tomorrow i will make another push to skip a camp at the other end of iowa and push 387 miles to make it to a wonderful little camp in South Dakota, Union Grove. If we did 498 today, we can do 387 tomorrow and get settled in before dark. (As soon as i set up camp tonight, usable daylight disappeared.) Hopefully, i can shave two hours of my trip tomorrow. However, i am mindful that tomorrow will be the last day with the Defender's sides up. We are getting into cold country and i hear a freeze is setting in. When we expect to get into Yellowstone on Sunday, the temperature at night will be 18 and snow is forecast for the next three days after that. This magnifies the paradox of preparing fir these trips. Last Sunday, it seemed irrational in DC's 91-degree temperature to be packing gear for heavy winter. I will make do.
Tomorrow, before we set off, i think i will treat myself to a nice warm shower, the first in four days, and probably the last for the next 10.
Ed and Donner, from the road, on the Mississippi
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