Longstride

I had anticipated waking up around 7, in order to get to Inn at Long Trail's breakfast, starting at 7:30, but I wound up sleeping in a bit longer; the overcast skies and wet ground seemed to confirm the weather forecast of rain for the day.

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I slept in this morning, not getting out of bed until almost 8:45; after over a week of getting up before 7 am every day, it was nice to sleep in for once.

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About five minutes after I got into my sleeping bag last night was when the pain hit. My feet had lied to me: they weren't actually ready for 19 miles of hiking. For the next two or three hours, they demanded constant attention, and I cycled between lying there restlessly and massaging each foot in turn. Eventually, the pain subsided, and I was able to get some sleep, though the wooden bunk I was sleeping on in Cooper Lodge felt hard as rock, and I couldn't really get in a comfortable position. (That there was no guard to prevent you from rolling off the edge did little to help my sleep, and I would occasionally wake up and wonder if it was safe to roll over because I couldn't actually remember which way I was facing.)

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I woke up in the morning to discover that the rain spared us overnight. Checking the weather forecast again, I noted that it should be raining fairly certain, so I tried to get moving as quickly as possible: it would be best to be able to get hiking before it started raining, and any amount of hiking I could do before the rain started would be that much less hiking through mud.

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I got started today a little after 7, in fairly nice weather, and began what turned out to be the easiest day of hiking on the Long Trail so far, with no major climbs and a lot of relatively flat or downhill sections.

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