June 9. A scare last night

When we began this journey, it was difficult to sleep because of the sounds. You can here critters moving around on the ground and in the trees it is usually too dark to see anything so the imagination goes to work. I use to have to ask Mark to go with me if I needed to leave the tent to go to the bathroom. Now that we have spent ten weeks in the forest, it has become very normal to me. I find the sounds almost soothing. The fear of the night has gone. It is a beautiful place even in the dark

The place we are camped in has a somewhat clear floor. Mostly crunchy dry leaves which is very comfortable to sleep on. Now yesterday we heard a bear and stood still listening to it walk around until we could finally see it. Maybe 15 minutes or so. A bear makes a different sound than other animals. For one they make a lot of noise. Sticks are breaking. They don't seem to pick up their paws. So in the middle of the night we hear a bear moving quickly toward us. We are startled awake at the same time. It is quite loud in these leaves and dead sticks on the ground. We start talking to let it know we are here. It stops moving. We would feel better if we could hear it move away but just quiet. We keep talking.... No movement. We start to fall asleep when we hear it again. We start talking, even try barking sounds (a tip from another hiker). Quiet again. We are feeling unnerved and there is nothing for us to do but wait. Finally it slumbered away. It will be more comfortable when the bear are afraid of us again.

We started our hike today at 6;30 so we can have breakfast at the next Wayside and hike as close to Front Royal as we can get. Tomorrow we will meet mom and Rosanna at 5ish to get ready for our three day canoe trip down the Shenandoah River.

Saw a bear again. That makes nine. Unbelievable. This one never saw us

Brenton asked for a picture of his dad to see his weight loss. We had fun with this one. Notice he is holding the awesome knife Brenton and Jenna gave us for Christmas.

Also, a picture of us yellow blazing