Day Ten: We hiked out from Polls Gap five miles to backcountry campsite 41. A pleasant hike downhill, dreading the inevitable return trip. Enjoyed starting my very first personal fire all on my own - Robert helped a little, but let it be my baby. It started like a champ and warded off the bugs. Ate Pasta Primavera (alpine back country dehydrated food) and curry lentil soup mix for dinner. Got water from the stream for cooking, just boiled it. Used the clever bear bag system to hang our packs overnight.
Sat by the fire digesting until we saw we had visitors. Three sets of eyes in the dark about twenty yards off. Quickly alerted Robert, turned on headlamps to find nothing. Then the eyes opened again. Crap! They were moving and quickly, the eyes were closer now. Robert was dubious that the eyes would shine without our lights on, so he guessed there was someone coming down the trail, shining a light. Headlamps on...no one...headlamps off...eyes. Breathing quickened, scrabbled closer to Robert - this is black bear country.
Lightning bugs.
Still didn't sleep that night and to add insult to injury one of those little guys hit me in the face and lit up in my eye to freak me out again at which point we retired to our protective nylon covering (the tent).
Day Eleven: Day hiked an eight mile loop. 2.3 miles straight up. Found our first bona fide bear tracks, bear scat too. Hike up was Tough. Survived. Pandered for a pot of water at The Swag (a swank resort that parallels the park by Hemphill Bald). Felt like a dork sitting on park land watching the wedding preparations on the other side of the fence. We even put out head nets on the bugs were so thick, I'm sure we made a great backdrop to their fancy pictures! Bald = a bald, grassy spot on to of the mountain. It was picturesque so we took pictures. Easier downhill back to camp. Camp was full of scouts preparing for Philmont. Don't mind us, we are just going to chill our beers in the stream. Best idea ever! Much more sleep seeing as the camp was teeming with people and no bear would dare to mess with us with those odds.
Day Twelve: Dreaded uphill hike out. Turned out to be not so bad. I just had to breath after every step and let Robert trail ahead of me so he wouldn't see me cringe at every step uphill. We made it out around noon and planned to hit up Clingman's Dome, highest point in the park, but the road was still under construction. I started to feel incredibly car sick. We found a place to stop and it was literally difficult for me to walk from car to picnic table with out hurling (sorry Amanda). I sat there, head down, until Robert forced me to eat our lunch of Pb&J tortillas. In ten minutes, my outlook changed and I was fine. Apparently my body wanted more food. Car sickness hasn't been that bad since thank God.
Drove into Gaitlinburg to get groceries and call the dads for Father's Day; Gaitlinburg proves it's worth- cell service and fresh veggies.
Dinner of green curry finally! Bucket shower after dark. Illegal, but it felt so good.
Recording the adventures of Robert and Jenn since 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment