Day 189

Day 189 (pct 79): 27 miles

I wake up to hammer saying something. I look at my watch. It says 7:00. “Fuck.” 90 minutes late again. Start packing up.

This is a bit of a tradition hammer and I like to do. After waking up late I had to lay there for about 15 minutes in mediation tying to tell my body it’s not allowed to go to the bathroom for many hours. The mosquitoes were so bad in that area, it would’ve been a death sentence. Because of this I was in discomfort most of the day and moving slow. Thankfully late in the day I came across a parking lot with a bathroom and moved faster after that.

I saw 2 herds of elk today. The first I only saw movement through the trees directly to my right, probably 30 yards from me but when they started running it sounded like a stampede. Later, in a big meadow I saw a herd grazing and then running away.

We entered Mount Rainier National park today for a bit. We don’t go near the mountain but it’s still nice to admire from afar, which we’ve been doing for a while now cause it’s so massive.

After waking up late and moving pretty slow it wasn’t a great day for distance. I ended up stopping pretty early too cause the campsites in this area are pretty scarce and when they are there they aren’t great. So right now I’m cowboying on the trail in a semi flat area. Not ideal, but I don’t know when the next viable campsite or even flat area that’s not in a ledge where I could do this would be. There’s still quite a bit of mosquitoes so this isn’t great.

Song of the day: perfect places-lorde