Daily Miles: 17
Total Miles: 152
We woke up at 5am again this morning. Even though we didn’t need to make a lot of miles, like yesterday, we all agreed it would be good to get some morning miles in while it was still relatively cool.
We always feel bad when we pack up before the other campers have woken up. There were at least five other people camped at our campsite. Our plastic trash compactor bags that we use as pack liners make noise as we pack, regardless of how careful we are. This morning, Beardoh accidentally stepped on a water bottle, and it made quite a loud noise (Qball thought we had broken the branch that our we used for the bear hang). Hopefully everyone was able to fall back to sleep after we left.
We started walking with headlamps at 5:30am. It felt like it took longer to get fully light today…we used our headlamps for over a half hour.
Early in the morning, we stopped at a beaver pond, so Beardoh could get some water. While he didn’t like the look of it, he wanted to make sure he had adequate water, since it was so hot. The view from the pond in the morning light was really nice. This trail has reminded us that the beautiful moments don’t always require big, dramatic vistas…we can appreciate the beauty in the smaller details.
Today’s high was 90 degrees and extremely humid. While we felt like we weren’t drinking enough water during the first week, the past few days, we have made a concerted effort to drink a lot of water so that we wouldn’t get dehydrated in the heat.
Today seemed to have a plethora of nice viewpoints. In the first half of the day, it seemed like we were coming to a rocky view point every quarter mile. And with the leaves starting to change color, the views have been really nice.
We also walked through a rock formation called the Lime Squeeze. It was basically a narrow slot through two rocks. We laughed at the name, because the Appalachian Trail has something similar called the Lemon Squeezer.
We stopped for an early “first lunch”, meaning just part of the food considered lunch food. We realized we were all pretty low on water (Qball was basically out of water), so we headed out after lunch to our next potential water source, which was two miles away.
It was really hot and there was a lot of climbing the first mile, which was very exhausting. SweetPea even decided to hike without her shirt in order to try to get a bit cooler. Unfortunately our expected water source was dry. That meant we had another two miles to get to guaranteed water at the Tettegouche State Park visitor center.
The trail has been rerouted in this section because a bridge was damaged in spring flooding. So, the only other way to cross the river is to walk down to Highway 61 and cross on a bridge for cars.
It felt like a long two miles, as we hiked with dry mouths in the heat and humidity. As soon as we got to the visitor center, we drank over a liter of water. We ended up going inside, which had air conditioning and tables next to outlets where we could charge our devices. We bought sodas and ice cream sandwiches. Our moods were instantly improved once we had some water in us…not to mention the cool spot to relax.
We ended up staying at the visitor center for almost three hours. It was hard to motivate ourselves to go back out on the heat and humidity, but finally just after 4pm, we put our packs on and headed out.
We only had a few miles to go to camp. We stopped to make dinner at a rocky outcrop. Every once in awhile we would get a breeze which felt nice.
We had a mediocre spot for hanging tonight, but we made it work. Even though we had fewer miles today, we are still tired and are ready to sleep.
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