Tuesday, July 2nd.

Tuesday, July 2nd. Day 14

Today's miles = 21 Total CDT miles = 193.3

Last night I woke up at midnight to a rustle by my tent. It took me a moment to realize that the sound was not in my dream. Once I did, I listened for it again. Sure enough it was there. The rustle was loud and definitely being made by a large animal. I called for Monkey to wake up. It took him a minute but he did. We both started making noise and after about 5 or so minutes the animal went away. Naturally I was scared...again. So, Monkey invited me to have a sleep over in his tent. At 2:30 after a few hours of being awake we both started to let ourselves fall asleep. Right as we were about to one of the pups barked. Panama and Beth were camped about 30 feet away and their two dogs were in their little doggy tents not too far from them. One of them barked waking Panama. He immediately began making bare calls. His dogs do not bark unless they are protecting so he knew something was around his tent. Baboon and I also began to make noise even thought we hadn't heard anything quite yet. Eventually the animal came closer to us and we were able to hear it. It seemed to just be hanging around our tents. It stayed close to our tents for quite a while. Everyone had their hands on the bear mace making noise in the tents. After a long bit the noises began to go away and we all fell asleep for a few hours before daylight.

Once it was time to wake up no one moved. I listened and Panama and Beth were were still in their tent. None of us had gotten very much sleep. Eventually we all realized that we had to get up and Monkey went to get the food that he had hung the night before. Apparently a bear had dug at the base of the tree overnight.. so I think its rather safe to say that the animal that had been by our tents was most likely a bear.

The morning hike was awful for me. We were in the exposed sun pretty much all morning. My already sunburned legs couldn't take anymore and I had to cover them despite that it was so hot out. The only pants I have are my rain pants, my fleece pants and my thermals. None of these sounded like good options so I tried to rig bandanas around my legs in an attempt to shield them from the sun. That worked for about 10 steps. Then I tried to wrap my rain jacket around my waist so that it would hang down to the back of my legs. That helped a little. Finally, I gave in and smothered my legs with aloe and put on my thermal leggings. Luckily we came across water not too long after and I was able to dunk myself in it too get the pants wet. It definitely helped in keeping me cooler. If I had known that I would have been hiking through desert like conditions this early in the trail I would have brought sun pants.

It wasn't until later in the day that I got any energy for the day. I ended up speeding through the last 7.5 miles of the hike today in record time (so far on the CDT.)

My camp spot for tonight is the rocky ground in the front of a locked shelter next to a waterfall. I believe it is guard station and naturally it is alll locked up. Panama and Beth are camped just 15 feet away and the pups are in their little tents on the porch of the shelter. All I want for tonight is to have an animal free night of sleep.