Day 92; Fri July 27 2007

(Stud) When I woke up this am, the shins felt considerly better. I don't know whether to attribute it to the ibuprofin I took after dinner or that they are just healing. I hope the latter because I'm getting kind of tired of this ailment and am just about out of ibuprofin.

We camped less than a tenth a mile away from the creek we were trying to get to last night. This morning, while Dwight pumped, I stretched out my calves. We expected to pass Troll and Oblivious still sleeping but they must have gotten up early and down the trail in front of us.

We hiked until 1 pm with only 1 short break to get water. At one point the trail markers, which have been consistant in this section dissappeared and we thought we were off trail. We dedided to wait 15 minutes before backtracking and luckily saw a trail marker with 4 minutes to spare. Maybe we're finallly getting the hang of this trail.

After lunch we had a 1500 ft climb. At one point we heard some clicking to the left of us. I thought it was one of the many yellow and black grass hoppers the have been buzzing around us like helicopters the last few days. But Dwight jumped back a few feet nearly knocking me over like a bowling pin and said, "it's a rattler". A big, mad one too. It moved into the bushes but didn't stop rattling so we moved along quickly getting as far to the oppisite side of the trail as possible.
WeKd been seeing a lot of cow patties and finally the cows that went with them. As soon as they saw us, they took off running the opposite direction. (Apparently, they could smell us.) Curious thing: we have passed through dozens of stock gates on this hike, but none in this section. There is no fencing here whatsoever. What keeps these cows together?

Around 4 we stopped at a creek that had several nice pools. As we were washing up, another couple came along--Clare and Patrick. We'd seen them earlier, just as they were getting up for the day. They are also thru-hiking. Patrick just founf out he has "the G", or so he was told at the local hospital. It sounded like more of a guess on the doctors part who told him the Flagela (sp?) wouldn't hurt him if it really wasn't Giardia. They also told us Troll and Oblivious were actually behind us, but they caught up to us at dinner and we ate together.

We are camped at the side of a pasture where "eau d'cow pattie" wafts in the air. Dwight actually had to remove a few to make room for our ground cloth. I draw the line at picking up cow dung!

Troll and Oblivious are camped nearby. We hiked 26 miles again today and my shins feel much improved.