What a day today. We slack packed today and Happy Place (Matt) is back - no problem with 15 miles but the true test will be tomorrow with full pack.
Had a good climb and came to another beautiful mountain lake which Gravity and myself could not pass up even though we only had a few miles logged in for the day. Very refreshing and keeps your body cool even after an hour of hiking.
The trail today for the most part was very nice - not to many rocky areas or crazy climbs. After we were halfway thru our hike we realized a restaurant was ,5 miles west of our ending spot for the day. Food always sounds good here so we calculated and found we would be hard pressed to make the 7 pm closing time that was posted in our hiking guide but we kept a good pace with food giving us an extra boost in our hiking.
Six o'clock comes and we have 2,5 to road plus the ,5 west once we reach the road. 3 mile an hour pace isn't going to get us burgers and fries so we decide I will run ahead and hopefully beat closing time and have a pile of food waiting when Gravity and Happy Place arrive. I kind of get excited about the challenge and of being a hero for the day so I take off running. Not sure if I mention it had been drizzling all day long .
I'm moving along and feeling great. The terrain has some ups but nothing to severe and mostly down which is usually the case when coming off a mountain to the road. I'm hauling butt jumping over rocks and tap dancing around the roots feeling like I've found my youth again. As I'm running along a large wide open beautiful view opens up on my left (I probably have about 1.25 miles done) so I slam on the brakes thinking why not check out the view and get a quick breather and I slip on my feet but make a soft slide on my rear end, this was about the only long view which was beautiful overlooking a small airport. After taking it in quickly I go back to my task of getting to the food. The trail is becoming a steeper down hill with large stretches of smooth flat rock almost as if it was poured for a sidewalk. Smooth wet rock can be slippery and I take a good spill but the only bad thing is I pick up a few pounds of mud. I shake it off and start up again. In a few hundred yards I see an open area that looks like it could be the road but turns out to be a large river bed that could handle the Detroit River. A foot bridge takes me across the massive river rock walls and swift running river. Just a hundred yards more I pop up into a parking which means only a half mile more on a flat surface to dinner but have no idea of the time. Just as I am about through the parking lot Miss Janet pulls in so I get a ride to the burger stand and it 6:40. Yahoo! Turns out they are open till 10 pm. Oh well I did my job.
We then drive back to the trailhead and Gravity and Happy Place come out just after 7:00 and now with Miss Janet's services we drive into Rutland and stop at the hostel. We see Slow Foot from Germany who is back on the trail who went home for 3 weeks due to foot issues. Rhino and Spiceman are in town also but we don't see them. Spiceman had to be then off the trail- he has vertigo-check my spelling. They had to go in and rescue him because he could not walk. We are waiting to hear if he will be back. Rhino's hand is out of cast and doing great
We also hear that Yukon, Boomer and Squatch are not far behind us and have not seen since the beginning of VA.
***miss Janet travels along the trail with her dog Fabian to help hikers anyway she can. We all four went into town for all u can eat Chinese and then went back to the trail and are now setting up camp in the dark next to the river we crossed a few hours ago. We have 25 miles to go in 2 days to reach our week goal of 96 miles.
All is well here and hope all is well where you are.
EZ
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