I say easy hike, but today we walked 24 miles. At one point we walked uphill for almost 7 miles…but it still wasn’t that bad!
Boostie and I were the first out of camp this morning and I took the lead to the first water source. I listened to John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed, at least until I ran out of hours of audiobooks. Then I heard Metallica.
When I reached the first water source, I felt very tired. Boostie arrived about 10 minutes later and we both took a nap under a tree for 30 minutes. We both had our bug nets on our heads as we were surrounded by little mosquitoes all the time.
The next part of the day was the climb, so we hiked 2.5 miles to the next water source to fill up on water. We needed three liters to get to the next source. Boostie, Frodo and I sat there until the Aussies caught up to us. For the rest of the climb, Boostie and I stayed behind the rest of our group. That didn’t stop me from passing all the other hikers we’d seen throughout the day! It’s funny: I always feel like a slow hiker, but I guess our tram is just a group of very fast hikers.
On our descent to camp, we passed everyone we had seen that day, including our tram. There was just one guy I hadn’t seen before and he was standing a little out of the way. I waved at him, but he just stared at me. That in itself made me think something was wrong, so I hoped Boostie could get to me before that guy.
Fortunately, Boostie was only five minutes behind me when I reached the last creek of the day. We realized that the man was the infamous guy with the two backpacks. Everyone has been talking about him lately and we’ve heard that he tends to make people feel uncomfortable and that he has verbally harassed some people. We hope that your presence at Kennedy Meadows does not ruin our experience there. However, word spreads so quickly along the way that I’m sure everyone present will know to avoid interacting with him.
Boostie and I were the first to arrive at camp, but there were already five or six people there. We hadn’t seen any of them today, so they must have camped a little closer to here than us. We quickly found some decent spots to set up camp. I made Beef Stroganoff for dinner and some Nerds Gummy Clusters for dessert. Finally, I crawl into my warm, cozy quilt for what I hope will be a good night’s sleep.
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