Today I spent a lot of time getting water. In the morning I went down to the spring our late night visitor said he cleaned and found it not really flowing at all. I was able to get about four liters of water to fill my platypus and I carried it back up the 0.3 miles or so to the shelter. About 10 miles into the day I needed water again from a shelter and this time the shelter listed three springs – down a hill and more reliable as you go farther down. The first one was fairly close, but dry. The second was probably 0.2 mikes farther but dry, the third one was maybe another 0.3 miles and through mostly overgrown trail but thankfully fully flowing and ice cold.
Other than the epic water quests the most exciting part of the day was some nice trail magic. We found a box full of all the fixings for PBJ sandwiches: real bread, decent peanut butter and some good jelly. There were some other random stuff like Little Debbie cakes as well, and about a dozen jugs of drinking water. I borrowed Miranda’s spoon to use for making a sandwich and it turns out I accidentally left it in the box. Good thing we’re close to an outfitter so I can buy a new spoon and also replace my trekking poles – the latest piece of gear to fail. I was so tired of the left pole shrinking a bit as I walked that I left them in the trash bag at the trail magic.
We still had a decent ways to go after the trail magic but eventually made it to the shelter. For a while it looked like it might be just us again, but Eli and Rachel showed up pretty late in the evening. We all gathered a bit of wood and Eli tried to start a fire but had no success, most of the wood was still damp from yesterdays rain.