Day 12: Monday, June 16

(Susan) I had high hopes for today. Expectation: An easy pleasant hike along the Glady River--an extension of yesterday's experiance along the Glady. The reality: A nice pleasant hike until the thunder and rain started rolling in around 9am. It rained on and off during the day--the last downpour coming in around 4pm. It isn't that walking in the rain is that unpleasant. I actually don't mind it when the weather's warm. It's hiking in wet socks and shoes--double AARRGG! The trail turned into a muddy mess--like walking in a clam flat. In spite of the fact that my shoes reached maximum water retension early on--I still found it necessary to avoid every muddy spot possible and rock hop creeks. Oh how I wish I could be that person who heads straight down the middle of a wet, muddy trail!

We made our final crossing of the Glady River around 6:30. There were some established camping spots on the far side of the river, but I was thinking we would find something nicer down the trail. What I didn't realize when we headed on was that the next 8.7 miles were roadwalk where either no camping was possible due to terrain (i.e dropoff to river on one side of road, granite cliff on other side) or due to fact that property was posted no trespassing and was generally enclosed in barbed wire and electric fences.

When it got close to dusk, we started getting anxious about where we were going to spend the night. We thought about knocking on the door of a farmhouse and asking if we could sleep in corner of the owner's pasture, but it seemed to late in the day for a stranger to show up at someone's door. Just as it started drizzling again, Dwight headed out across a small grassy pasture and dissappeared into shoulder high grasses. A few seconds later I heard him calling me. I thought to myself: there's no way in hell I'm going to spend the night in that big tall mess of plants that probably has poison ivy, poison oak, stinging nettles and who knows what else! But given the despiration of the situation, I headed through the dent he made in the tall plants, and popped out the other side of the small pasture into a grove of pine trees! Dwight was already breaking off some lower dead branches off one of the trees to carve out a place for us to put up the tarp. It isn't flat by a long shot, but we are fairly hidden from the road, and are out of the rain. We ate a quick, cold dinner and are calling it a day.