May 22nd, 2021
Mile Marker: 229
Miles Hiked Today: 22
Planner and I slept in till about 6 and packed our bags and called an Uber to come take us to the trail head. It’s always hard leaving a cozy bed and relaxing place but we both knew we needed to head back out and my blisters were feeling a ton better.
We started the day with a surprisingly hard 3ish miles because the terrain was heavy sand and gusting winds. I at times felt like I wasn’t moving at all.
We then started heading up the mountains into incredible views. I feel like every time I say this, but man, this time was the best so far. Just in every direction we could see the mountain we came down from and then the mountains we were going to hike.
The best part about all of it though is that none of it was extremely steep for a long time. Planner and I felt like we were cruising pretty easily which was nice compared to what we had been doing.
When we first started hiking I was super paranoid about my feet but quickly realized with my bigger size shoes, my pinky toes or any other toes didn’t hurt at all. The big blister on the bottom of my feet felt weird, but didn’t hurt after being taped, which was huge. It had been throbbing before so I will take it!
After about 13 miles we came to a river!!!! All of us hikers were so happy to see it and Planner and I immediately went and dunked our feet in the cool water and washed our faces off. Ahhhh, how we had missed being able to do this every night like we did on the AT.
We then sat under the shade with a few other hikers and let our feet dry out and ate some lunch. To our surprise, we also saw Radio who was just as surprised to see us.
“I thought you guys would be long gone by now!” He exclaimed.
We chuckled and let him know that we took a 0 and that’s why we were where we were. After an hour or so we headed out and up through the mountains for an additional 9 miles.
The trail twisted and turned and then had us following another river/creek for many miles.
As we were approaching an area to cross through the river we saw a section hiker that we had met previously and she had let us know that the trail gets very confusing and we had to follow rock cairns.
Okay, easy enough… but how she described it made us a little uneasy. We quickly realized why. The trail started weaving in and out of the river and trees and bushes and a lot of the time Planner and I had to wait and look around, sometimes finding the cairns and sometimes not. Then we would head in different directions, some times we would look where we saw shoe prints, and some times we just guessed. The last 1.5 miles to our camp site took us way incredibly longer than usual but we were happy to be near water again so it was fine. 😂
We also couldn’t get over how beautiful the trail was today and how seamlessly we traveled it.
I feel so happy that my feet hurt less today. I’m still making sure to take care of my blisters properly until they completely go away, but man do I feel 100 times better than I did!
Rest days are SO worth it, and new shoes are too. 😄
Iz and Oz
Izzy + Ozzy 