Day 36! 26.45 miles!!

I woke up today around 5am on the nice comfy bed in Ryan and Rachel’s “library” room. I was suuuuuuper tired, but also excited to hit the trail again! Rachel had gone to Dunkin’ Donuts and bought us boys all 4 donuts each!! I tried to go for it, but I was only able to scarf down 3 maple bars. After thanking her, we were on our way as Ryan drove us to the trailhead on his way to work.

The trail followed highway 58 for a while, going east paralleling it for what seemed like a while but was probably only a mile or two..

Julian

Rocking his new shirt!

The trail soon split off from the highway and went pretty steeply right up the canyon side. Up and up and up we went. It was very very windy and I had decided to start the day in shorts (actually, that’s all I have), and my short sleeve shirt. Brrr!!

Climbing out and away from the highway

After about 6 miles of climb and brutal wind, the trail finally started turning shrubby and the winds died down as we left the canyon side and started traversing the usual hills up and down.

The trap soon joined a road which we followed for around 5 miles, and eventually we were snaking our way back through lines of windmills. I thought we were done with these things!!

So open today!

Our first water source, Golden Oak Spring, was over 16 miles away and we got there just in time for lunch!

Yum!! Appetizing! 

(Jk, there was a clean spring trickle feeding this trough. We did not drink this water)

We took a pretty long break here, until about 3pm, and decided that we could do the next 10 miles rollercoastering up and down out of some wondybcanyons and landing us in a nice, tree’d and sheltered campground.

Beautiful!

Man, zero days are great! I should take them more often so I can feel fresh and keep beating my longest day records the next day! 26.45 miles today, Woo-hoo! Julian and I feel pretty dang good! His foot was hurting in the beginning of the day, and my old blister location threw me for a loop and I thought for a second I was getting another in the same spot. But as we went on those pains went away and we did a solid huge day!

It’s amazing on a personal level to see what my body is physically capable of. This is the longest mileage I’ve ever hiked in one day, and we didn’t even push ourselves too hard, get up too early, or even hike too late! We did about 7am-6:30pm with a big break in the middle. We aren’t silly enough to try and push 30+ mile days right now, we know what our bodies can handle and we’re also not in a huge rush or anything, as our pace is quite fast right now. However, it’s exciting to know that at least a few times on the trail (probably in Oregon), I’ll be doing a few 30 mile days! 

Anyways, super excited, super tired, super thankful and blessed. Thanks for reading everybody :)