Day 2 brought a lot of cicadas that has climbed out of the ground onto our tents during the night and were still hanging around waiting for preflight warm up. Their increasing noise forecasted a hot day- and they were CORRECT! We set out at section point 1, which had an interesting signpost showing the various distances to points of interest! After much discussion of which direction we should head off to (mostly between April and Wendy- I had my own idea but one more opinion wasn’t needed that early in the morning), we headed out (in the correct direction I might add). It started off as mostly old towpath and along the edge of fields before finally taking to all back roads with no shade, hot sun, and temps in the mid-90s… brutal! Naturally we were hiking in these conditions during the hottest part of the day. The only highlight was a random dog who trotted out from a farm, not barking so we assumed he was curious and semi-friendly and joined us hiking along the road for a good distance before turning back home. We also came upon a kind of memorial garden to a classic mustang (car that is) featured in a farmer’s front yard. We were ALL dragging, and I was running out of water, when we passed a small house with some older men (by this I mean they appeared older than us) working outside and April decided to boldly walk into their backyard and ask to use their hose for water and to soak our hats/scarfs to cool off. Wendy and I cowered under a tree in the front yard. After a few minutes April called for us to join her and it turned out that George (?) and his two buddies just finished putting up a ‘rock’ that can forecast the weather (you gotta see it- FUNNY) and he was in fact a trail angel who had hosted a previous BT through hiker. He gave us all bottles of ice water and offered that we could take a swim in his Koi pond- these fish were HUGE. If we had gone swimming, I doubt we would have finished our hike that day. We chatted in the shade for a good half hour and slowly restored ourselves for the remaining hike- we still had A LOT to go. Once again it was reassuring to discover that in this divided nation of ours a complete stranger could be so kind to others. We have had vastly more good experiences than bad in this regard, so why does politics have to keep twisting it around? Maybe it is the politicians, media?
We reluctantly set off after giving George and company our profuse thanks and hit on a strategy of taking many more breaks when we could find shade. Eventually we came to the Defiance reservoir and adjoining park system. We were so tired nobody had the energy to climb the small hill to view the reservoir, but instead we sheltered in a gazebo next to an artificial sledding hill- hope they can use it with lack of snow we have been getting in recent years. We all complained about the complete lack of trees planted in the vast amount of grass surrounding the reservoir – it was incredible and continued in an adjoining housing development. I can see no need for trees in the middle of cornfields, but in a park and housing development? Anyway, there was a nice boardwalk around part of the reservoir that provided some shade relief, and we finished up the hike by absorbing some air conditioning in a local supermarket and the car ride back to camp. We were all physically spent and skipped the nightly fire as we had enough heat for one day. It was a miserable experience and we decided not to bike the distance from the marina to Pontiac Park since the weather was not expected to get better and it was all road that we had driven on at least a dozen times – I guess we are NOT that much of BT hiking purists (since we have biked part of the BT, I guess we are not purists by that criterion either). As part of our biking decision, we also decided to give ourselves an easier following day and add in some fun time and camp relaxation time.
