Day 309

Day 309 (AZT 14): 34 miles

The terrain wasn’t too bad today. There was a good amount of climbing but it wasn’t as rocky as the mad as hells. It’s always good to have an extreme point of comparison for each trail where you can point to and say “well this wasn’t as bad as that.” For downed trees it was mt hood wilderness on the PCT and the southern winds on the CDT, for the winter AT it was everything. I hope for the AZT it will be the mad as hells.

I saw a strange animal this morning. It looked kind of like a raccoon but had a long tail. It was starting to climb a tree then we both saw each other at the same time and it froze for about 10 seconds. I was trying to move closer to it to get a better view but it started to run away, got a little bit of it on video. After doing a little research, my best guess is that it was a coati? If anybody knows what it is please enlighten me.

I don’t know what the bug is but it seems to be a cousin of no see ums. I’ve been getting bites for a few days now and never see the perpetrators, not sure if the pain is a little delayed or if they’re just too small to see. My knees actually feel a little unstable from me trying to rub them together so often to get the bugs off. And it must be something else that bit me but I’ve got a pretty gnarley swollen bite on my calf that’s from something bigger. It also doesn’t help that There are some sizable holes in my tent and when I woke up today there was a big fly that was flopping around grounded. I must’ve hit it in my sleep, making Bruce Lee look like a chump.

The sunset was amazing tonight. I’m really happy to be out of the forested area where I can mostly have good views of the sky at the end of the day.

Song of the day: doperide-saliva