VictoriaJanuary 31
For those who have been following along every day, you may have noticed that the blog skipped a day. I was so exhausted after the third hike that I couldn’t muster the energy to write about it. So I’ll back up a day to get you caught up.
But before I write about our arduous hike, I feel the need to write about what happened when I went to sleep the night before.
Picture this. You’re sound asleep when you’re awoken to an itchy bite on your ankle. You know it’s new because you weren’t scratching when you went to bed. So you double up your blankets, thinking you’ve outsmarted the bug, and try to fall back to sleep with a smug look on your face. But… what if the little bugger (ha!) is under the blankets and you’ve now created a hermetically sealed tent for its feast? So you throw off the covers and start flapping the blankets, hoping it will leave you alone and attack your spouse instead. That was at 3 a.m. and I think it was a sandfly even though I wasn’t at the beach. They’re everywhere. That was pretty much the end of my sleep for the night. My Night with the Sandfly. A new entomology genre?
After my miserable semi sleep, we awoke at 6 a.m. to get ready for our 15 mile hike. There was great cloud cover but no rain in the forecast. Mid 60’s. Ideal hiking weather. I was tired and not in the best spirits to endure what lay ahead. We were warned that the day would be strenuous. Holy elevation gain Batman! 1600 feet? Mitch and I played word games to take our minds off the climb and it definitely helped. So did listening to a podcast and also music. Singing along with the Daves (Matthews and Grohl) also distracted me. So did cursing. Anything to take my mind off what felt like the hardest and longest hike of my life. Then the views came along and I was gobsmacked.
Looking at the pictures now it doesn’t seem real, the sheer beauty. Towards the end of the hike my feet really started hurting. The soles were burning and my calves were crying and every step was miserable. The last half mile was on a paved road, even worse for my feet than the trail. I could barely make it to the hotel and if I saw a car I would’ve hitchhiked the last half mile. Strangely, I wasn’t hungry for dinner and barely ate, really just wanted to get some sleep. I was worried about the next day’s hike, wondering if I would be able to hack it or should we just skip it and take the boat back. I hoped for a good night sleep.
