Daily Miles: 22
Total Miles: 307
We had a very relaxing day in Pinetop-Lakeside yesterday, getting some town tasks done and watching some episodes of Shameless.
This morning, we went to the motel breakfast when they opened at 6am and filled our bellies for the walk back to the MRT. We headed out around 6:30am, and had decided to walk an alternate route back to the MRT…it kept us off of the busy town roads and had us walking on the nice wooded paths outside of town. It worked out really well, and we were back on the MRT by 8:00am.
We continued to enjoy the great local trails in the area that are maintained by a local trail group. The trails are so well-built and routed that the walking is very easy. We are able to make good time on these trails, which is nice.
At our first water source today, which was a game tank, we were sitting having a break when a really cool and colorful bird came to the tank and got a drink of water. We had never seen this bird before, but it was so pretty and we were happy just to watch it.
The terrain today was mostly pretty flat, walking through solid pine forests. The forests today seemed to be very well managed…being thinned out, with almost no undergrowth. You could really see far in these forests because they were so thin. We were able to see some deer and turkeys as we were walking today.
In the afternoon, we were expecting to get our water from an earthen stock pond, but right next to it, we found a small puddle with about four inches of pretty clear water. We were happy to see the nicer water and to know that we wouldn’t need to filter any dirty water today. When we were packing up from the break at the puddle, SweetPea was surprised to see three teeth suck to the bottom of her pad. We don’t know what kind of animal they came from, but it was pretty weird!
We stopped to camp around 5pm, which is a bit early, but we had already walked as far as we needed for today. The day has been cool and breezy (perfect for hiking), but it will probably mean a pretty cold night tonight. We are all ready for a long, on-trail night of sleep tonight. We seem to sleep better in the woods these days than in town.
It seemed like we all had better luck with our feet today. We had gotten some cheap socks in town, so we could wear two pair for extra cushion (SweetPea and Mace wore two socks each today), and we bought some blister pads for our heels (SweetPea and Beardoh both had these on today). Those things, plus a day of rest in the motel room have helped our feet feel better today. Hopefully the happy feet feeling will continue.
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