Day 107: Backwoods Banquet

Date: July 25, 2017
Miles: 1904.1 – 1922.6

 Its always hard to leave civilization, even if civilization is an RV park that overcharges for everything, and especially when the pack is full of too much food and water. I’m still not rocking this resupply thing, but at least I’m not going to die for lack of food out here. And Rodeo, an 18 year old kid from Texas, is really benefiting from our inability to dial in the food, since he ends up getting the extras. We didn’t leave until around 10:30 this morning, so we decided to do about 20 miles to Charlton Lake. We also decided to make the first night out of town the ‘Backwoods Banquet’ night, which means that we’ll all take some special or heavier than usual food out for the first dinner, like a different pasta dinner or small boxes of wine. I’ve learned that you have to keep things interesting out here, or try new things, to keep total boredom from setting in. I think it has already gotten to quite a few people, since we see more and more people quit at every town stop, and the hiker community is thinning out. We passed quite a few lakes today, and had lunch at Maiden Peak Shelter, which is a cabin maintained by a local ski organization.

A thunderstorm cooled things down around 3 pm, and we tried again to outrun mosquitos as nature’s drums beat in the distance. We met Donkey and Polliwog at Charlton Lake around 6:00 and had dinner on its banks around a fire.

The dispersing storm clouds and emerging sun created a lovely pink and orange layered sunset that I watched quietly from inside my tent as bugs buzzed around anxiously and small fish leaped out of the water like miniature breaching whales. I kept thinking that, as much as I want to be home, I also feel so lucky to be here, and I wish that they could both be the same place.