Day 4: East LaPorte to W. Laporte.... AKA red barn to red barn

End of Day 4...we are feeling good!

Today's run brought all three of us meeting at Family Express off of Rt 2 just outside of LaPorte proper and taking a bit of time to drop a car on the west side of LaPorte. I observed that we were running from one corn field to the next. Kearney's route did a nice job keeping us in a straight line.

Parking my car literally in a corn field...we took off around 11:30 this morning headed east.  We quickly entered into LaPorte and roads that Kearney and I observed we have run races on prior.  After passing Soldiers Memorial Park we wandered through the streets of LaPorte running past some beautiful churches and a family celebrating Christmas early.  It was a relief getting out of the stop and go traffic of LaPorte...and headed out to county roads.  We all have trained on county roads at some sort in our training so it was nice just to go and not worry about cars running stop signs or lights too much.  Much of our conversation today centered around Christmas traditions and what we had left to do for the upcoming holiday. Kearney shared with us his travels on Saturday.... he drove nearly the miles we are running across the state. He reported a lovely holiday with his family he was visiting.

We had some visitors of a different nature today... furry animals.  From the most popular dogs to horses to cows and even a caterpillar still crawling around on the side of the road.  Around mile 6 I found a friend of a different nature.  When Kearney forwards me the picture...you will see why our pause at the mile 6 mark was one of my favorites today.

As I mentioned above dogs were frequent sights in people's yards. Most were restrained by invisible fencing, however we did have a scary occurrence with one pooch.  Thankfully Kearney and Milligan were there and screamed and yelled at the menacing dog that was nearly attacking us.  As we continued down the street I cautiously peered over my shoulder hopeful that he remained in his yard.


The last five miles or so consisted of several long hills.  At one of them was a dairy farm..and boy you sure could smell it.  I wanted to jump over the fence and go pet the cows as they were fairly close.  About a mile down the road Milligan attempted his horse whispering skills and attempted to convinces two horses he would make a great visitor for them....  their food was more appealing.

The  end of our run resulted felt like a blessing from our guardian angels...the overcast sky parted enough to allow the sun to shine down on us today...it was so warm and wonderful to finish with such a sight.  My colleagues decided that looking into the sun and taking our post run photo was a great plan...so ya got the someone passed gas look from me...really.... I'm just trying my best not to squint.

Walking back to the corn field we dropped Kearney's car off...we were greeted by a kind man-Dennis- his two dogs were not shy either coming to check us out.  While we were explaining to our new acquaintances our goal the sheriff pulled up and we realized we might have gotten some vehicles tagged....

Fortunately no worries... both vehicles were A-OK.  We will be parking in front of our new friend's red barn tomorrow.

Stay tuned.... ya never know what kind of trouble the three of us will find tomorrow.....