Educate Malawi, Inc.: Day 2

The day started with me waking up startled…by what I could tell was later than I had intended to sleep! I woke up at 4 a.m. and felt kind of awake, but knew it was too early. I fell back to sleep, and woke up at 5:45….a little later than I would have liked to get started. It was ok because we were able to get everything picked up, packed up, eat breakfast, including Folger’s instant coffee (which I love!) and I was on the bike starting at 7:30!!
This was where we stayed after the first day of riding....

It was a beautiful ride but lots of hills today. Unlike Maine, these hills seemed to be much steeper. My recollection was that Maine had a lot of hills, but they weren't as steep. There was a lot of beautiful scenery; rolling hills, fields, farms…between Stephen and I we got some beautiful photos that captured a little of it. It is always difficult with photos and ‘the real thing’….there is a feeling when you are in nature that cannot quite be captured by the photo.

One picture Stephen took, was of me (below) in front of a field of rolled hay (bales? Are they bales if they’re rolled?)…after viewing it later, it struck me that it looks like I am photo shopped into the image and it was funny to me!

After that photo was taken, I was riding along thinking about Malawi and fields that I saw there…how they worked in their fields and the lack of machinery they have to produce their crops. I remember seeing them in the fields, women mostly, working from the crack of dawn or before, back breaking tilling and planting. Additionally, I remember seeing the women carrying wood on their heads coming down a mountain after chopping it up from the trees. Oh yeah, and they were barefoot!

Stephen said the horses in this field did not care he was there, but this donkey was focused on him!

I stopped, just as I was starting down this hill, and took this picture with my phone - loved the way the clouds were so low on the mountain

We arrived at the campsite at a reasonable hour, actually earlier than they would allow us in! They said that the site wasn’t ready yet….I was not sure what that meant. It was a tent campsite, no beds to make, no bathroom to clean…what exactly did they need to prepare for us? So they suggested we could go down to the Lake and wait for about an hour and a half; they said they had a nice concession stand down there. We went down and they did, in fact, have a nice stand. We ordered hot dogs and fries (which would be our big meal of the day), and they were extremely large orders! Stephen also ordered fried pickles because he thought the portions of everything else would be relatively small…we were overwhelmed with food!!

Before too long we were able to set up the tent and clean up before Bryan, my son, drove down from the Utica area to visit with his girlfriend, Britt! I was very excited to be seeing him since it has been several months…we went and got some food and then visited at the Lake and then at the campsite before he and Britt headed back at dark.

Bryan loves that he is taller than both Stephen and I

Stephen and I ate a small snack and then packed up for the night. We were in the tent around 8:30, which wasn’t terribly early. The park we were in was quite busy as it was the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. There were a variety of camper styles around us including tenters, pop up campers, towed campers and driver campers. There was a camper 2 sites away from us who left the ‘porch light’ on, and it shone directly into our tent, on my side. At one point I closed the flap because it was so bright. Neither Stephen nor I slept well that night. In addition to the light, a baby was screaming in the middle of the night, clearly unable to go back to sleep, and shortly after that the thunderstorm came through. Oh, and a car alarm went off at one point and I also heard a couple of cars start up and leave the camp ground…it may have been due to the baby screaming or the impending storm. The lightening was flashing for quite a while before the thunder and rain started.

And that, was Day 2….