Friday, July 19th

Friday, July 19th. Day 31

Today's miles = 26.7 Total CDT miles = 443.1

I woke up to the cascading and flowing sound of the polluted river. Yum! Baboon and I packed our things and walked through town to one of the grocery stores where we got breakfast sandwiches from the cafe there before heading out. The first 10 miles today were road walking on the side of a highway and the next 7 were road walking on car trails. 17 miles into the day there was a beautiful lake (Storm Lake) that we sat at and had lunch. After the lake the trail began again. I feel like its been a while since I've actually walked on real trail. I was excited for a moment until I started climbing up a pass and realized that trails are not graded for cars and therefor they are steep. *sad face*

All the sudden when I got to the top of Storm Pass I remembered I was in the mountains. The view opened up and I was just surrounded by beautiful mountains. I took a little break at the pass just so I could stare out into the distance - then I got a whiff of a skunk so I got up and started hiking again.

After Storm Pass and before the next pass I ran into Flyboxer who had left town yesterday. We all took another little break at the second pass which was even more spectacular than the first.

Baboon and I hiked until we found the camp spot we are at tonight. We were going to push it another two miles tonight but we came across a beautiful camp spot with flat ground and a fire pit. We didn't want to cook where we sleep so we stuffed some cheese wraps into our faces, hung our food, and set up camp. Its only 9:20pm and I'm already in my sleeping bag. Its still light out so thats throwing me off a bit. I'm hoping for a good nights sleep tonight so I can put away some miles again tomorrow.