Day 14

Day 14
There were coyotes again last night. Even though I could hear them in front of and behind me, I wasn't too worried. Reading about them had eased my mind. I have had a few night where I have been pretty sure animals have been outside my tent. As my number of nights grow in number, I begin to doubt all of them. The wind, both when it is soft or fast, can always sound like an animal pawing at my tent. However, I know for a fact I was visited last night. I heard a bunch of strange noises I was unsure about, but this one shot me awake. It was the sound of hooves hitting the ground and loud puffs of breath being exhaled. It was too dark to check what it was, but from living in Alaska, I know that moose trample people all the time. All these nights I was expecting to get eaten, and here I was going to get trampled to death. It sounded like when A bull or horse is ready to charge- hooves pawing the ground, followed by snorts. I got on my nees, ready to dodge, but nothing happened. I waited for a while, until I finally couldn't hear the animal anymore. I was exhausted, since it was three in the morning. I was able to fall back asleep pretty easily.
I slept in late- I tried catching up with this blog until about midnight, plus I lost some sleep because of the visitor. But I eventually got going. It was sunny, but not too warm yet. I was running low on water when I finally found a little store. I filled up my jugs and also bought a delicious sandwich. I didn't buy icecream this time- it wasn't too crazy hot out. The worker there was very interested when I told her about my trip, so she dicided to take my picture to put on the wall. I didn't get a good look at it, but I believe it was just a "cool people who have visited this store" wall. A few miles later, I passed by a shell gas station and decided to buy another water bottle just in case. I took somewhat of a shortcut, but unfortunately there wasn't a shoulder, so I had to be über careful for like 8 miles. The cars seemed to be very used to bicyclists though, none of them cursed me out or anything. I finally got to the highway again. The shoulders were great. I passed by two rv parks, and seriously considered calling it a day so that I could get caught up and have an early start tomorrow, but I decided to keep going for an hour and a half. I'm already way behind what my average needs to be. A bit after sundown, I found a spot that can only barely be seen from the highway from one direction, and it overlooks a small creek. Skip the following sentence if you are a female. Despite having pooped two other times today, I ended up leaving a pile so big down by the rocks that even a bear would have been proud- it must have been the entire package of cookies that I ate. Once I had my tent set up, I calculated out how I was doing so far. If I average 80 miles per day, I will finish in under 100 days. I'm hoping to have a few nice flat catchup days where I get over 100 miles, but I'm pretty satisfied so far. I also determined what my plan was for the next few days. I will need to charge my batteries soon, so I'm hoping to get to a warm showers host. In 200 miles, there is one. I know I can go 66 miles 3 days in a row, but I'm hoping to stretch myself and go 100 miles a day. I will need to wake up early and really peddle without stopping for long. Apparently there are train tracks nearby, because I could hear and see two small trains wizzing by in the distance at about 5 miles per hour.