Aug 8th, Day Eight

This is actually looking back on my trail.

Today we woke up early to the sounds of a deer snorting in alarm.  It could have just been scared off by our tent but we could not be sure.  When you are sitting by your selves in a tent in bear country, it’s hard to go back to sleep after an animal has raised the alarm.  Thus we got up and broke camp, continuing our trek down the SRT path. 

Bear scratches on a rock.

The trail that morning was rough; there was lots of underbrush grabbing at your legs, and overgrown trail portions.    The second part of the trail was far better kept so that was nice.  We still think the whole path was the equivalent of RT66 for bears though.  There was bear sign everywhere, but we didn’t get to see any this day. 

After about 7 miles of hiking the SRT path we had been on, it reconnected with the original Long Path trail we had started out hiking on.  Here our trail followed along an abandon railroad bed for a while, which is not much in the way of story but it was hell on our feet with all those big rocks. 

The SRT reconnects with the Long Path

Looking out over some of the forest.

After the railroad bed we hiked a couple miles further and as we walked along a nice level point half way up a ridge we decided to take advantage of the semi level, semi open ground to make camp.  We put up our tent and made some dinner.  Miles sensed there would be a storm coming that night so he hung his cloths outside to be washed; then crawled into the tent and laid down.  The thunderstorm rolled in while it was still light out and lulled us off to sleep.

My camp for the night.

Traveled 15.85 miles of trail. 

-SM-

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