Trail Daze

The delay in posting is caused by not having cell signal at Wind Rock and then my phone losing the post I had already written. I'll try to get everything in the post but I have already written it once so I might forget to put something in.

The remainder of the 18th was spent driving back to Damascus where we camped at Tent City .5 mile out of town. The 19th and 20th we camped in Tent City. On the 21st we got a ride back to the trail with the Incredibles, went .2 miles to a great view at Wind Rock and camped there. We decided that Trail Days hadn't been the actual restful break we had wanted and spent the 22nd and 23rd at Wind Rock as well. This was only mildly successful at being as restful as hoped (more on that later).

So UV's faux parents showed up at the road crossing in the afternoon on Friday with lots of food! They brought lasagna, pesto spaghetti, bagels, cherry pie, brownies and ice cream. We had a great meal on a rock on the the side of the trail. I had to have multiple desserts because the ice cream was melting, I did my duty and helped finish off the ice cream with some brownies. After the meal we started the drive to Damascus.

We got to Damascus early in the evening and went straight to Tent City so we could find a spot. Tent City was packed. There was an open field with some tenters (photo below) but that was just a small portion of the people there. Most people were camping in the woods behind the field. There were tents and hammocks everywhere in there. Any spot that was remotely flat had a tent on it and many of the non-flat spots were filled with hammocks. After what was probably an hour and a half, we finally found a pretty decent spot right next to the river. No one had ever camped there before so it was a bit overgrown but after some work with my knife the brush was mostly cleared away and there was a nice little flat spot. Since it was right next to the river it was virtually impossible to hear all the partying going on in other places in Tent City.

That evening we went to the free food, drink and music at one of the churches in town. The food was good but the music a bit jesus-y. As UV's faux Pa said, nothing is ever truly free. We also had to give the little old lady at the front of the line a hug to get food. Very nice of them to do all this for free. After that we wandered a bit and then went to bed.

The next morning was spent fixing or replacing gear. UV's air pad had a leak so Big Agnes replaced it. Her bag was ripping, so Osprey fixed it. Her headlamp was acting up so Princeton Tec replaced it. My bag needed smaller hip pads and shoulder straps and Gregory quickly swapped those out. It was great having all the gear people there and completely willing to do almost anything to help you. After wandering the vendor area it was time for the hiker parade.

The hiker parade is where all the thru hikers that want to parade down main street in order of year--current thru hikers bringing up the rear and in chronological order, getting older as you move forward. This seems like it is meant to sort of honor the hikers and the tradition of hiking but in reality it is just an excuse to have a town wide water fight between the people in the parade and the observers. Water balloons, squirt guns, hoses and any other sort of water delivery system that people can come up with are employed to get the other side as wet as possible. There were quite a few people even on the roof of Quincy's Pizza trying to get a better vantage. It definitely allowed their hose to have a longer reach. (pictures below)

The rest of the day after the parade was spent managing when drawings for free stuff were happening and when. Most of the vendors had some sort of drawing for free gear but you had to be present at the time of the drawing. After all the drawings I had quite a good headache so I decided to call it an early night.

The best part of the whole experience was seeing a lot of the people that I hadn't seen in a really long time. Virtually the entire original crew was there--Bunny, Button, the Incredibles, Red Fury and Highlife were all there. It was great seeing them all again and finding out where they all are on the trail. It turns out the Incredibles were just 27 miles behind us. It turned out to even work out better to get a ride back to the trail with them Monday than with UV's faux family.

So Monday we got a ride back to the trail. The ride gave us extra time to swap trail stories and catch up with the Incredibles. It turns out they would like to Aqua blaze with us so hopefully they catch us. We aren't going fast but Elastigirl's mom is coming to hike with them for a few days which will slow them down and then they are taking a few zeros. I still think they can easily do it.

After getting dropped off at the trail we were both not feeling great due to the long car ride. We decided to just go .2 miles to a nice view (photo below) with some camping and relax there. Such relaxing seemed to take 2.5 days which theoretically wasn't bad since it would be a nice rest and we would be ready to hike after that. It didn't actually work out that way since the day after my feet and knees hurt a ton and UV didn't feel great either but that will be covered more in my next post.