Comfy in my little rest area I took my time packing up and even had some oatmeal for breakfast. After packing it up and refilling my water I shuffled off down the road. From there I didn’t really come across any great wonders. I simply spent the day walking, thinking, and occasionally plopping down in a shady spot. In one shady spot, right before getting into Seneca, I took my shoes off and laid back against a tree and just as I was about to leave a car of lovely ladies rolled up to me and handed me a nice cold Pepsi. I got excited, they giggled, I thanked them, and they drove off.
In Seneca it was about 2:30pm when I got there. I found the library with minimal complications and conveniently it was directly across the street from the Post Office. This was the day lil Digi the camera was to be heading home back to her mama. I popped in at the library and uploaded all the pictures off it in as quick a time as possible then turned around and deleted them all from lil Digi’s memory. This took about an hour and twenty minutes. I started at 3 so I finished at about 4:20 and ran across the street to the Post Office that closed up at 4:30. The lady was very nice there and waited as I packed up things, figured out addresses, and wrote little notes to various people before piling them all in their individual envelopes and boxes to send them off. She closed her window around 4:55 and I left town.
On my way out I went to stop in at a gas station to ask about a place to eat but found two guys filling up outside. I asked them instead and they pointed me across the street to an Italian buffet place. Stopping in it was fantastic. It was an all you can eat pizza, pasta, ice cream, and pie buffet which I gorged myself on for the next hour or so packing it nicely with coffee. The two guys, Nick and Nate, bopped on in and ate as well and eventually we got to talking. They came over and hung out at my table as we traded stories of things we liked and that sort of stuff. Eventually they had to go, and after some ice cream and pie I decided I should go too if I ever wanted to walk again.
It was a wise decision, and one that should have been made earlier. My belly was swollen to pop. It was 6:30 and the sun was down in my eyes. The horizon was looking promising, but no place to camp in the immediate vicinity.
After three or four miles the horizon still looked promising in the same way. Every time I got near some woods they’d be fenced off or guarding a house. Finally I looked over a half plowed corn field and a home not far to the east of it. Between the two was a strip of reasonably thick woods. The sun was almost touching the trees so I dove in hoping no one in the house saw me go.
It was a dried up creek bed with trees on either side. Of course in the backyard of the house, 1,000 feet away or so, was a little girl on a swing set and dad milling about going in and out of the house. I got to a place where a thick evergreen covered me enough from their view and trees on the other side blocked me enough from the road that I made due with my uneven ground and set up shop. I was still incredibly full so I just laid out my bed and lay down to sleep before the sun set.
It was a little past midnight when I finally fell asleep. Too much coffee and too many sweets for dessert had me staring up at the branches overhead, writing a bit, and toward the end listening to coyotes wandering around in my creek bed no more than probably ten to twenty feet away. They didn’t seem to want to bother me and I just wanted to sleep, so we left each other alone and I presume each made lovely nights of it.