Day 4 - Up and Over

Water, Water Everywhere

Day 4 started early (5:00 am). We were in a cloud for about a half hour, which was pretty neat. It rained all night, and I was very happy with how well my tent held up. Very dry inside! 

We got up, lowered down our bear hang, and had a little breakfast. Based on what we had learned in the previous days, we decided to take it easy, so we were just enjoying our morning.  Once we did that we decided to start packing up.

That's when the heavens opened, and bucket sized raindrops started falling from the sky.

We packed the tent up fairly quickly, however it did get drenched. We figured we'd have to sort that out later. So we put on our rain gear and headed out.

It rained for about 3 hours. It was actually quite nice hiking in the rain, I'm not quite sure why? Maybe it was just a nice change of scenery? Maybe because it was cooler? I don't know, but we both agreed we enjoyed it after it was over.

No news, is good news...

Today was fairly uneventful besides the downpour.

I think we are getting a bit of a routine established, and that is helping things to seem "familiar", even if we've never done this before.

Around 11:00 we found a parking lot, and decided to set up all of our gear in the sunbeam that was there. We sat and ate a snack and marveled at the process of evaporation. After about 10 minutes everything was dry and we headed out again.

We passed by Blackrock Shelter, filtered a little bit of water and then made our way up over another mountain. And another mountain. And another one. 

Along the way there was a beautiful little park where we stopped and filtered a little more water.

We made it to Loft Mountain campground, which is very nice. There's a great store, showers, laundry, etc. We may take advantage of the showers in the morning. 🚿

Our neighbors in the campground were very sweet people, who were supporting a slackpacker. They were actually from Utah, and we're good friends with a friend of mine that I work with. 

We enjoyed our dinner, and a couple of bags of chips and dessert from the store in the campground. Then it rained again after dinner, so we retired to our tent.

Resupply!

We've made it to our first resupply day! Tomorrow my sister will meet us with a car full of goodies to restock us while we try to figure out what the rest of our week looks like. 

The Goal is a Moving Target

ChuckWagon has been great. He doesn't complain, leads the way, and has a good attitude. 

He stated yesterday that he doesn't know why he is out here, but not in a negative way. He said he doesn't like doing things without a purpose or goal.

So we brainstormed some goals, he thought he might like to hike 50 miles. I pointed out to him that we had already done that...😂.

So he said "maybe a hundred". This is well short of my original goal, however I really want him to enjoy this trip. So we may be heading in sooner than we thought. 

And that's ok. I'm having a great time, and I want him to also have a great time...