Journal Entries

Here's a gratuitous photo of one of the sunrises we hiked into through the Basin.

My feet suffered the most on this trip. Pretty much everything else was good, though I the Salomon running shorts definitely have to go. They have a nasty seam right on the inner thighs that is not flat stitched and was chafing places where my boxer briefs did not protect.

Foot-wise though, these shoes caused me some grief. Part of it is because they were wearing out and now have holes in the heels which were caused a blister. The other part is that they rub my feet funny where the sock-liner meets the inside of the shoe, creating these friction sores - not really a blister, but red patches that hurt alot. They have done this since I first got them... so time to move on to something different. So long Altra Superior, I really love your toebox. I am going to have to tread carefully when making my next shoe purchase.

I totally have to figure out how they got to that camp site on the other side of the lake... it looks fabulous. My first inspection tells me they actually jumped across the rocks in a shallow rapids section a little further along. Something to investigate for the future because that spot looks pretty sweet.

I LOVE the combination of rain, the high contrast of the dirt and the trees, coupled with fog - it makes for striking photos.

I must have really appreciated my bug-free oasis, because here is another shot of it.

Biking to the market with @brienne on one of the few rainy days this summer. The one day we have free to go biking, it rains. Plus we didn’t have a car so he had to bike anyway!

The best and the hardest thing about the views in the Basin are that you can see for miles and miles and miles. I took this photo just so you can see the trail we followed all the way from the horizon. It took a fair bit of extra self motivation to keep walking because there were no trees or hills or waypoints to measure your progress with. It felt like we were moving on a treadmill sometimes, walking over the same slightly rocky gravel road past the same 5 sagebrush bushes. But it also felt good to be able to see all that way back and finally think "oh we walked over that!"

The Basin was a beautiful few days of walking. It gets a bit of a bad wrap, but we got a good (for the Basin) weather window and actually really enjoyed it.

Don't get me wrong, we will not be suddenly doing 30mile days from here on out! The days were exhaustingly long, and we fell into bed each night wondering what on earth we were doing, but man the views were worth it. It was fairly flat sage brush for miles and miles and miles in every direction, which reminded me so much of the hiking in the north of Australia. So pretty.

And on to day two... there are much fewer photos now due to the fact that the bugs were worse than yesterday and eventually rain. Put it all together: walking up hill, in warm muggy weather, while it rains, with bugs harassing you = no desire to take photos.

I am smiling here because I found a little high-ground oasis that was relatively bug free for a break. It hasn't started to rain yet, though the clouds are thinking about it.

Leaving the campground the day after our hike we met these AT thru-hikers who had started from Georgia late February. So fun to chat and cheer them on for their last AT push - Kathdin! The guy on the left - trail name Traveller - couldn't wait to shave off that wooly patch on his face :) The guy on the near right is from Edmonton, AB, Canada. And the other fellow on the right in the background and the girl sitting in the front got married a few days before they started the AT. Their trail names were Honey and Moon. Love these AT stories and achievements. Both sets of parents of the newly-weds were here - they had provided this morning feast (trail magic!) - you see the scrape on Traveller's knee? That is fresh blood from scraping the rock "table" this picnic was sitting on: I'm thinking after the 100-mile Wilderness this food looked pretty inviting!