Day 47 - More Brainerd

At least I was able to check back into the Arrowwood Lodge, so I could visit with all my stuffed friends again.

One question that I get asked a lot is whether I ever got bored or lonely, since I was traveling by myself. The only time I really felt bored was during this extended stay in Brainerd. I managed to fill some time exploring around, boating etc. but I hadn't expected to be spending so much time in one place with no real means of transportation. If that had been part of the plan I would've made arrangements for a rental car for the whole time and figured out some bigger excursions - sort of like I did in Muskegon. As it was, I'd really run out of things to do in the local Brainerd area.

As for getting lonely? Yes and no. I was always able to find people to meet and chat with, but at this point I was definitely starting to miss being home and spending time with my wife. We'd talked about this before I left and while we're both pretty good at being on our own (I used to travel a lot for work years ago) after eight weeks it got to be a bit much. But, I knew I had some good stops still ahead of me, so I didn't want to get discouraged or feel like I needed to race back home too quickly. 

My statement in the original post about making good decisions and not letting the schedule force you into doing something unsafe was referring to some of the recalculations I'd done of my remaining stops. I had a few variations where I realized I would've been trying to do way too much. I had to stop and really think about what would be the smart and safe thing to do, even if it meant missing a particular stop.

The good news was that the extra delay meant the weather would be clearer, so I had a lot more options to work with.