Mapping the Sheltowee

[I.B.Me]

Day 5 Wednesday 7/4/07
Happy birthday America! To be born free is a privilege to die free is an awesome responsibility (Author unknown). We broke camp at 6:46am, again low on water, breakfast had to wait. We refilled our water bottles at the Church of the Standing Rock’s spigot and continued our road trek past the oil wells of Lee County. Only a few of them were pumping. I found this odd with crude oil prices at all time highs. From our previous hikes I remembered a country store on this section but was unable to find it during the pre-hike so I assumed that it was out of business. One of the highlights of the day was stumbling onto May’s Food mart, Restaurant and Deli. While Johnnie Anne Robbins made me a big deli sandwich and Moes Robbins watched, I checked out their inventory and found to my surprise everything a thru- hiker would need to re-stock a pack. The ham and cheese sandwich weighed about a pound and she threw in some “scraps” for Jack. The scraps were really just extra slices of ham. After I left the store, I was disappointed to find the trail Ryan and I followed in 1999 had been closed and replaced by a nine-mile pavement walk all the way to the Heidelberg Bridge. According to a man on his front porch, the owner of Lago Linda’s Hide-a-Way moved in from West Virginia and had the trail closed.
The other highlight of the day was meeting Hxxxxxxxx(name omitted on purpose). The three-great grandson of Daniel Boone lives on the trace but was not aware that it was named after his late relative. Hxxxxxxxx now 87 years young came outside to see what his dog was barking at only to have me engage him in a thirty minute conversation about everything from genealogy, career advice, history of the 1917 Lee County oil boom to current politics. One thing I do is try to engage everyone I meet in some sort of conversation. Sometimes it’s a dud but this time it was pure gold. I took Hxxxxxxxx’s photo with Jack and finished my road walk to Heidelberg. Arriving back to the car at 2:59pm, we drove back to Morehead, hooked up the tow bar and took Jack home. Data for day five: 20.2 trail miles hiked, 1.1 extra miles hiked, moving time 6:24, stopped time 1:39, average moving speed 3.2 mph, total average speed 2.6 mph.