Day 96; Tues July 31 2007

(Stud) Our campsite was comfortable last night except, once again, the ants made their way into our sleeping bags. Periodically I would wake up in the night to feel one crawling around on me, but I never seemed to be able to grab hold of it before it scooted away. I eventually gave up and let them have their way with me. Dwight reported a much better sucees rate of "stalking", squishing then throwing them out.

This morning's hike was largely along hillsides though dense fields of wildflowers. I think we must be near or just past the peak wildflower display in this section. Cow parsnip is the dominant flower, but we are also seeing paintbrush, statis, purple aster, fireweed, sunflower, goldenrod, tufted loosestrife and ???

After lunch we headed on a downhill course toward the Siead Valley. The hiking here was through the woods with much vegetation closing in on the trail just like the wildflowers earlier in the day. We saw very little of the poison oak that was supposed to be such a problem in this section.

We leap frogged Old Corpus and Gary most of the day and are camped next to the Clider Creek, 10 miles from Siead Valley--a tiny town that the trail passes through. Gary is camped a few feet away and Old Corpus found a spot a few miles back.

We hiked about 27 miles today and my shins are feeling 100% better. Yeah!