May 10, 2016

Our plan had been to get up at 4:30am and push for a longer day. The alarm went off and there was an immediate, unanimous, unspoken decision to sleep another half hour. Of course a train went by as soon as I had silenced the alarm.

The hiking for the day began with 3 miles along highway 58 before turning north for a 2000 ft climb. Eeyore and Rickets caught us at a break just before the top of the climb. We had a long snack looking out over what we hoped was the last of the wind farms we would pass through. Getting blown around on the edge of ridges with a 3 lb load throwing your balance off is not as much fun as it might sound.

We reached the spring after spending the rest of the morning walking along a dirt road. Here we had our first official encounter with the Rat Pack we had been yearning about at different hostels along the way. I found out that I shared the same birthday to within a few hours as The Great White Turtle.

The final 9 miles of the day to camp were pretty disjoint and definitely hard on the feet after the road miles on hard packed earth. The campsite was great though: a grassy grove of trees sheltered from the wind. It did make it difficult to set up near one another and we ended up a bit spread out.