Day 129 - Friday, September 3

Tenting at a small pond (mile 2323.6). Walked 24.9 miles today.

I was awakened about 3 am when I heard a noise outside. Not having heard it before, I panicked slightly before realizing it was an elk call. The elk were very active. I could hear their hooves as they ran across the ground and as they splashed in the lake. I never got back to sleep after this and when Frank's alarm went off, we took our time getting out of camp.

There was a ton of condensation on our tents. I used Frank's towel to wipe it all off and had to wring it out several times. We finally got going about 8:30 and set off through the woods, passing tons of lakes and ponds along the way.

We stopped to chat with Late Start, who Frank had met yesterday and he joined us hiking for a few hours. He's a cool dude who has a PhD in biomecatronics (or something like that - basically he built robotic legs for people who are paralyzed. We passed 2300 miles as we were walking and chatting with Late Start.

He stopped for a break and Frank and I continued on, eventually getting to an ice cold river where we ate lunch. Three members of the horde that left Trout Lake with us showed up. We've really come to dislike these three (named Bear Slayer, Cricket, and Peagle) and try to limit out interactions with them, but they keep going our pace so we see them a lot. We pushed on and began a long climb up with some nice, but smoky views once we got out of the trees.

The trail became rockier as we climbed and at the top, we entered Mt. Rainier National Park. Around the corner, we got great views of "The Mountain".

Around the next corner, we got great views of the Schneider Springs fire which is burning a few miles to the east.

The trail wove in and out of the park over the next several miles and our pace slowed as we climbed over rocks and the rough terrain. Frank and I stopped for a break and she told me how her foot is hurting, she thinks she has tendonitis in her other ankle, and she's tired. We got going after a few minutes and shortly after got to a beautiful meadow.

Frank stepped off the trail to take a picture and in the process, banged her shin into a log. She got back to the trail and we started off again, only for her to almost immediately stumble on a root and nearly faceplant into the ground. This was too much for her and she broke down at this point. I tried to comfort her the best I could and after a few minutes, we slowly hiked on.  We went around Dewey Lake and climbed up to a pass and then hiked down the other side to a pond where we planned to camp for the night. 

We got the last spot, nestled in the trees.  Our "friends", the three stooges, had started a campfire.  They obviously don't care about anyone but themselves and just do what they want.

Frank came over to me with a fake smile and a semi-crazed look on her face and sarcastically said that because there's a campfire, we should have thru-hiker kabobs for dinner.  I reminded her that cannibalism is frowned upon, and also that she's a vegetarian.

We sat down to snack and she told me she had found something for us.  She held out her hand to reveal a pair of apple bluetooth earbuds.  She had just found them on the trail but we don't know how to get them back to the person who lost them, so I guess we'll use them.  We had been talking about getting a pair so we could listen to the same music or podcasts simultaneously.  We finished our snacks and went to bed, the campfire still going.