Wednesday, September 4th

Wednesday, September 4th. Day 78

Today's miles = 19.3 Total CDT miles = 1,174.6

I woke up earlier this morning than any other morning on the CDT. Dare I say that I had more motivation to hike this morning than any other morning on this trail. I was so starved for water and wanted nothing more than to make it to Benton Springs. I had to wake Baboon up...twice. I was the one with my head lamp on this morning packing up in the dark. We hiked the 3 miles to the spring in record time (for how dehydrated and hungry we were) and sat by that precious water for an hour and a half drinking all we could.

After we drank and filled up our bottles again we began to hike once more. It wasn't long until I saw a herd of wild horses off to the right side of me. They noticed me there and stopped to stare. There were about 7 or 8 of them and they kept a close eye on me. As I would hike they would trot ahead as to keep me in view. This went on for about 30 minutes until they finally lost interest.

The day was hot today and there were no clouds. Every step was in the exposed sun. The trail was a car trail made completely of sand today. It was like 19.3 miles of walking on the beach. Every step is harder to take when your trudging through deep sand. Around lunch time I reached my second source of water for the day and stopped to eat and fill up my bottles. I grabbed 3 liters for the 9 mile stretch to the next water; a resevior. About 4 miles in I realized that I hadn't really drank any of my water and stopped for a break. I accidently sat on my hose to a water bladder and every drop of my water drained into the sand. I didn't realize until I got up after my break. I now had 5 miles left to hike to water uphill on a road made of sand in the hot sun without a drop of water. Monkey shared some of his so that I could make it the 5 miles and when we got to the resevior all I could do was jump in I was so happy to see the water. After my little swim I had to pick off all the amphipods (little baby shrimps) that had stuck to my skin before I filtered a liter of water. I didn't move from this resevior the rest of the night.