Friday, April 29th

501 Shelter (1196.4 mi) to Windsor Furnace Shelter (1226.0 mi)

Hiking Miles: 29.6

Total Ascent: 3,616.1 ft

Total Descent: 4,216.5 ft

Total Grade: 264.4 ft/mi

Steps: 67,819

Whoa, it was a bitter cold night, especially getting up and out twice to pee. We left the shelter at precisely 6:40 am, an hour later than planned. With that, we didn’t expect to make it to the Port Clinton pavilion by 4:15 pm (23.6 miles) to pick up the free shuttle to Cabelas. But we were going to try!

We progressively made good time, and along the way we saw more cool sights – one being a colorful rock garden having words of kindness painted on each one. The weather remained cool but we felt energetic, and we soon realized we actually were going to make it to Port Clinton in time for the shuttle. Towards the final stretch of trail, we knew we only had one significant (steep) downhill to complete, so we kept pushing along.

And sure enough – We DID IT! The only unfortunate non-occurrence was the shuttle never showed, so we called Cabelas. They claimed they indeed were there at 4:15, however we were there well before 4:00 pm and they clearly did not show. Realizing their situation, they verified their neglect of sending a scheduled shuttle and apologized. They promised that a driver would arrive at 5:15 pm. We got the feeling they did that often.

This Cabela’s was the franchise’s largest store across the country. It was huge! We picked up some needed gear (fuel, higher powered night lamp, 1L BeFree, and a thermal mattress liner for Stevie) and also did a small resupply of food. We chatted a bit with a few hikers who worked at the store, then we walked to Subway down the road for dinner, and stayed until closing.

For the ride back to the trailhead, we got lucky and managed to connect with an Uber driver named Mike. He was watching a John Wayne movie when we called, but he was very responsive. He drove us a few miles back to the trail head by 8:20 pm where we proceeded to night hike another 6 miles to the Windsor Furnace Shelter campsite. It was a long, dark and grueling hike for me given we were pushing 30 miles for the day. Stevie led the way the whole time. I so desperately wanted to stop and sleep, but I kept repeating to myself “the more miles we complete tonight, the less we have to do tomorrow to arrive at the Blue Mountain Shanty”. Stevie had already booked the Shanty (a hostel) for the next evening. We finally arrived at 11:40 pm, set up our tents and got to bed by midnight. We hiked our largest day finishing with 29.6 miles.

The site did not have a bear box, so we packed all our food and I kept it with me in my tent. One note about Port Clinton – it is not a hiker friendly place, but there was one couple on Penn Street who was kind enough to offer us water and a place to leave our packs while we went into town to shop. They had cats, so that confirmed they were nice people!