Day 19

Day 19 (PT 4): 33 miles

Well it was an interesting night. After the hunters and dogs left, there was quite a lot of animal activity around me. It sounded like something was walking around me a lot and breaking sticks, so I put on my shoes and went to investigate. I kept hearing it and kept getting closer, but then it jumped in the river and hid in a burrow where I couldn’t see it. I watched it make a ruckus in the water before I gave up on seeing it and went back to bed.

I kept hearing things run around. And later a small to medium sized animal assaulted my tent like I was Mason Rudolph. I’m not sure if it was a raccoon or a beaver or what but it made a beeline charge. I bashed it away before it was able to steal a shoe or my backpack or anything. I kept hearing things running around so I didn’t sleep too well fearing they’d take my shoe or something.

When I did get started for the day, I had the pleasure of kicking the day off with fording a creek. But this pleasure was only after waking up to a big spider hanging from the ceiling inside my tent, ready to fall at a moments notice. Overall, not the best night and start to the day, but it was uphill after that.

It was a beautiful day. There were some more fords but a lot of the day was high on a ridge. Now that didn’t mean I had views the whole time because there were still trees everywhere, but it felt nice to be up high riding the ridge. And I’m really starting to appreciate all the leaves on the trees. The UV index was 9 in the middle of the day. I cannot catch a break from Ray Baker, but the leaves definitely provided more cover.

I did take a 3 mile side trip to go to a dollar general and gas station to resupply. I got some pizza at the gas station and it was not good. I guess that statement was a redundancy. They also had Mad Dog 20/20 for $2.99 and I was really tempted to do some drunk hiking if only it wasn’t in a glass bottle which is heavy and hazardous.

One buzzkill of the day was that the trail was overgrown a lot. I was constantly walking through high grasses and plants, and all I could think about were ticks…

When I did get to camp for the night, I felt my legs and realized one was latched on to he back of my right leg. I panicked as if time mattered by the second. As quickly as I could, I got out my tweezers and after a few failed attempts because it was a tough angle, got it out and threw it and the tweezers a few feet away like a hot potato.

Other than being assaulted by a few dogs during the day which was really annoying, it was a good day.

Song of the day: something in the way-Nirvana