I took an extra day in town to let the front pass over. It turned out that even though I had just taken a day off earlier in the week, I still really benefited from more rest. The cumulative fatigue is starting to add up and affect me more. And I used the time to plan the next few days. So I felt pretty good about tackling the final push home. The rain had just stopped late in the night but the sky cleared and the wind wasn't too bad yet at sunrise. I was going in exactly the right direction for a good tailwind and I rode out on a smooth, flat, paved rail trail southeast. I made terrific miles quickly without much effort, and soon I turned off the trail and rode some low traffic, narrow and curvy roads beside the Wabash river. The river was very muddy and fast flowing after all the rain lately. A series of very nice signs along the way I had chosen directed me towards the Nickel Plate trail, pretty cool touch. You could make a good loop of these two trails that parallel north south and connect via these nice roads by the river. I came out near Peru but I didn't need anything so I just jumped straight on the Nickel Plate trail. This trail was also paved and smooth and fast. In Kokomo I got some snacks and stopped at a very nice new park to chill for a second, using the bathroom building as a windbreak. They had a bottle filling water fountain and I felt spoiled. I rode by the unnecessarily huge but beautiful old Seiberling mansion, and I had to double back because I had missed the other landmark, a giant praying mantis made out of scrap metal. Downtown was nice and had lots of new apartment buildings, nice spaces for shops and such, and the paths were really nice as well, but it just seemed empty, hardly anyone around. I ran out of path going east soon and rode a narrow back road out of town. I zig zagged on narrow but paved farm roads up to the little town of Converse, which had a more lively downtown than Kokomo it seemed. I got on another nice rail trail, and followed that the rest of the way in to Marion. I cut through a sadly quite neglected part of town to arrive at a spot I had scoped out by satellite. I never know what to expect but it was better than I had even hoped. There's a small patch of woods behind a couple big cemeteries, next to the Mississinewa river. It's sufficiently overgrown on the margins to block any views inside and blocks the wind nicely. I didn't have go in very far at all and inside it's mature, relatively open forest. It's amazing to be back in the dense forests of the east. So much easier to find good random campsites.