Daily Miles: 20
Total Miles: 32
It was a very damp night, but luckily we all stayed warm as our tarps got soaked from condensation and even our sleeping bags got a little damp.
During the night we heard coyotes which sounded quite close…maybe on the other side of the pond. The beaver whose dam created the pond also made an appearance…slapping down his tail and making a fair bit of noise.
When we got up this morning, we had nice blue skies and it looked like it would be a perfect day. At the campsites, there are open-air toilets which are pretty funny, because they were not positioned with privacy in mind. In several camps we’ve seen so far, the person sitting on the can is visible to all the other folks at the campsite.
When we left camp, we had our rain gear on. Even though the sky was clear, the condensation overnight made all the plants heavy with water. As we walked along the trail, our rain gear got soaked, but we stayed dry.
Today SweetPea’s right knee started to hurt her and it got progressively worse over the day. It was especially painful to go down steep sections or stairs. We are hoping her knee feels better tomorrow. Beardoh’s feet have been feeling pretty bad as well. Between the pain in his heels and his pain in his toes, it hasn’t been great. We have both taken ibuprofen over the last few days.
This morning we came upon a group of four folks who were out doing trail maintenance. They had cut back the foliage that was growing into the trail, which was very appreciated.
We got to a dirt road at lunchtime, so we decided to stop there for a break. We set out a few things to dry…JJ even laid his sleeping bag right in the middle of the road. Luckily no cars came by when we were stopped there, which was surprising because shortly after lunch as we walked along the road for a short bit there were five cars that drove by.
Once we got back onto trail, we entered the Judge C.R. Magney State Park. We started to see some day hikers who were headed to the Devil’s Kettles which is a twin waterfall in a canyon, where one of the waterfalls goes into a hole “of unknown depth”. It was a pretty cool spot and the trail around there was quite nice.
The trail then went up a whole lot of stairs to get up out of the river canyon. At least the stairs were in good shape and well spaced so it wasn’t too bad. It just didn’t feel good on SweetPea’s knee.
We left the state park and walked for a bit on a small dirt road. We got to the North Little Brule River campsite around 6pm. This is considered a medium campsite which was a good size for the four of us. There were no other campers there.
We were pretty beat after such a long day. It was nice to have some hangout time in evening before it got dark, but we all fell asleep pretty early.
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