Day 173

Day 173 (pct 63): 32 miles

I got between 2-3 hours of sleep last night. Early on, a forest rat came to battle. He was big, but he was pretty dumb and slow. I stayed at the ready with shoe in hand ready to strike when he came back for my pack. And he did. I hit him once and he stopped moving for a bit but he was a bit of a unit. He just didn’t want to die and kept moving so I just had to bludgeon him to death swinging with a shoe. After that I woke up a number of times from ants crawling on me. I probably shouldn’t have cowboy camped but I wanted to get out early in the morning. Before the day died he must’ve called for reinforcements cause around 3:30 I woke up to a few new rats launching an assault on my pack. I got up and outta there but not before they chewed a little hole into my shoulder strap pocket.

I hiked about 21 miles by 1:00 and rested at a water spruce for a while to wait out the heat. But it wasn’t good hiking. I was super tired and it was warm even in the morning before the sun came out. Around 9:00 it was hard to keep my eyes open while hiking. Rather than pass out while walking which I was progressing towards I sat down on a log for 5 minutes and took a quick nap. Then I heard Wild Side and felt a little more awake and kept rolling. I was basically crawling the last few miles to the water source cause I was so tired and it was hot.

When I got there I was hoping to catch up on sleep but that didn’t go so well. I laid down in the shade but woke up sweating cause the sun had moved so I had to relocate. This happened 3 times. I didn’t get much sleep and left there around 7 after hammer had gotten there.

It was 11 miles to the next water source where we would camp for the night. Towards the end of the day we were struggling to make it to camp so we started acapella singing some Kanye songs starting with I though about killing you and finishing with father I stretch my hands. Bad singing, good vibes.

There were already a few people camped where we were going to so we had to squeeze in some flat spots in some trees right by the water and oh my lord the mosquitoes were bad. This was definitely the worst tent set up job I had ever done cause I couldn’t focus at all while being assaulted by hundreds of mosquitoes.

Song of the day: Wild side-motley Crue