Day 65

Day 65: 20 miles

Last night I had trouble falling asleep for like an hour. Then I heard a noise. This rat must’ve joined the exodus from New York City and decided to relocate to pine swamp shelter instead of Austin, TX. After this I couldn’t fall asleep for like another hour and then woke up in the middle of the night to hear the rat scurrying around and couldn’t fall asleep for a couple hours. So I got a bit of a late start this morning.

I was walking in a marshy area which I knew was a bit risky but I threw logic to the side and kept moving. Not surprisingly, the snow below me collapsed and I sunk into black swamp water up to my thighs. I frantically got onto solid ground and then proceeded to yell some expletives. But thankfully my #goodvibesonly mindset kicked in fairly quickly. I was happy it didn’t ruin my phone and I would be getting new shoes in a couple hours and throwing these away. Unfortunately also in this fiasco, I broke off over half of my trekking pole in the marsh so I’m down to one pole.

On my walk into town to pick up my new shoes and tent I was assaulted by 2 dogs. They were barking and bluff biting at my legs for like 5 minutes before the owner came out. And then he could hardly get control of them. While hiking, my 3 most threatening encounters with animals are not bears, but dogs. After this bad encounter though, the people in falls village were lovely and excited to see a thru hiker out.

I didn’t think my old shoes were that bad and kinda wanted to push on with them for a while but once I put these new ones on DAMN it’s nice to have some support again.

Passed 1,500 mile marker today

Song of the day: coming undone-korn