Day 62- June 20th

Wow, today I felt thousands of times better than yesterday! This river is the perfect place to take a zero, relax, and regain some of my energy!

Last night I slept just fine, no emergency wake-ups. The tortilla stayed down, and someone even gave me some good electrolytes that I took today to help rehydrate my body. Not drinking enough water wasn't the problem, but the stomach flu definitely robbed me of all the water in my system. Today is a day of healing.

Between yesterday afternoon at the river and today, we've encountered 7 other people who got a crazy stomach flu coming out of Kennedy Meadows! All of which lasted the same time and had the same symptoms. We've been trying to find a constant to find out what the problem was, but I'm just thinking that someone who was there was sick, and a handful of people around them got the same thing. Since Claire didn't get it and we drank the same water and ate the same food items, I'm ruling out food poisoning. 

Whatever it was it has left my body! Shortly after waking up, my appetite rushed back to me and I started eating a lot. We went down to the river around 8am and filtered a few liters of water each. We relaxed in the tent, reorganizing our bear canisters and just laying out. Later when the sun was out in full force, we rinsed our clothing and shoe insoles in the river and took a little dip ourselves!

Relaxing on the riverside in the shaded grass was definitely quite refreshing. 

We headed back up to the tents and cooked a lot of food. I could feel my appetite slowly coming back and I almost ate a whole packet of Idahoan potatoes.

While we were prepping for bed, someone was nearby trying to find a nice campsite. He tripped over a rock and hit his head on a sharp rock with the full weight of his pack crushing him against it! I heard him fall and yell so I jumped out of the tent to see if I could help. He had hit the rock with his face just above his left eye, and blood was running into both eyes. I helped to get him cleaned up and applied a bandage to his head. He also landed hard on his wrist and thought it may be sprained. I told him he should rest at the river tomorrow and make sure he's ok, but he said he only had enough food for a certain amount of days and needed to push on. I really hope he's ok.

Well, if that's not enough excitement for one day, I was talking to Bourbon and Nema today and they had two bear encounters last night, (probably the same bear twice), up on the hill exactly where I had collapsed and waited for Claire to come and rescue me. Freaky!

Well, today was a zero day, and a well needed one. Now I'm actually glad that we had so much food on this stretch and we were able to spend this extra day here for me to recover.

-Thanks for reading!