Today I didn't even get started on my walk until 8am. The sky was slightly overcast and it felt cooler. Rain was forecasted for mid afternoon. I did a quick powerwalk to the post office to drop off Carol's bills. Truck traffic on US231 was at its peak, and the hydraulic brakes scared Zeke.
The city is finally clearing the trees at the World War II memorial site where US231 meets 109th Street. The Crown Point watertower is on the north end. The sound of cracking live trees, however, is depressing. Back in 2007 I'd walk Sara and Sammy along that gravel road to the water tower, pick berries to eat, and admire the wildflowers. All that wilderness is going for yet another WWII memorial. Seriously, don't we have enough of those here?
I left for Valporaiso at 10:10am, getting to Erin's before 11am. I can now quickly navigate the many turns and backroads to Erin's house without needing a GPS.
Ethan didn't seem too interested in going for a walk with me and I didn't push it. I was quite happy just hanging out with him and watching him play with Macks. He's quite tender with that little dog and Macks responds well to him. Zeke, however, is not comfortable with Macks barking so closely in his face. Zeke has held back snapping at him so far, but I always have to warn him to be nice.
We did finally head out to Kemil beach east of the Dunes State Park. My plan was to walk along the shore westward, then cut into the dunes via Trail #10. There were few people on the beach and no breeze, which surprised me. It felt just as humid along the shoreline than it did at the house! Ethan wasn't dressed to walk along the beach with heavy sneakers and socks, so I focused on staying along the wet, compacted sand from where he could skip stones and look for holey rocks. There were no storm clouds on the horizon, no billowing clouds anywhere. Where was the rain?
And when we turned onto the trail to get into the oak forest, Ethan looked at me and said "Are we climbing up a dune?!" Yes, we were, but this was a small one taking us into the older forest. Apparently that 3DuneChallenge from last week was more traumatic than I thought. I didn't push the issue so we just turned around and walked back to the car via the beach. Grand total miIeage: 1.34 miles. I didn't mind as it was humid. and I did 2.6 miles walking Zeke to the post office earlier. When will we get a break from this heatwave?! It makes walking anywhere uncomfortable for both Zeke and me.
Nick was prepping the house facade for paint so he was outside taking advantage of no rain.
I stayed with Ethan and then Owen and Ben and had dinner with them when Erin came home. Now the rain was delayed until 10pm, I left at 8pm and that big storm cluster over Wisconsin and Chicago was moving very slowly eastward. I hope to experience at least one violent storm while I am here, and I prefer to be safely in the house than somewhere on the road .
I was up until 3am hoping to experience a thunderstorm. I even had the blinds open to see the drama. It never came. That big rain cluster was just that: a big rain storm moving slowly through. It rained a little at 1am. I finally fell asleep from exhaustion before the rain came.
***
Global cases: 12,402,165
Global deaths: 559,764
US cases: 3,219,950
US deaths: 135,822
AZ cases: 112,671; ranked #7
AZ deaths: 2038
IN cases: 49,575; ranked #19
IN deaths: 2739
No comments:
Post a Comment