ok first of all i'm so excited cause one of my bestest friends just found out their little bun in the oven is gonna be a girl. congratulations times a billion to natalie and andrew. :)
so it took me over 500 miles, but i finally saw a bear! and four of them, nonetheless! a mama bear and her three cubs. swayze and i came around a corner and i think her tags alerted them to our presence. i wouldn't have known they were there had it not been for the fact that they made so much noise as they hauled butt up two tees. it was really cute... they were probably thirty or forty yards away (i'm not real sure... not good at distance) and two cubs went up one tree and the third cub went up another tree and the mama bear stayed at the ground keeping an eye on both trees. when they realized we weren't coming any closer, the lonely cub came down his tree and went over with his brothers and sisters, and the mama bear just sat there at the bottom of the tree and watched us. it's so crazy how fast they can climb! tip: if you're ever being chased by a bear, don't climb a tree. it won't get you away from them. it was a really neat experience seeing them. :)
so it took me over 500 miles, but i finally saw a bear! and four of them, nonetheless! a mama bear and her three cubs. swayze and i came around a corner and i think her tags alerted them to our presence. i wouldn't have known they were there had it not been for the fact that they made so much noise as they hauled butt up two tees. it was really cute... they were probably thirty or forty yards away (i'm not real sure... not good at distance) and two cubs went up one tree and the third cub went up another tree and the mama bear stayed at the ground keeping an eye on both trees. when they realized we weren't coming any closer, the lonely cub came down his tree and went over with his brothers and sisters, and the mama bear just sat there at the bottom of the tree and watched us. it's so crazy how fast they can climb! tip: if you're ever being chased by a bear, don't climb a tree. it won't get you away from them. it was a really neat experience seeing them. :)
i finally washed my hair last night after not having washed it for over 160 miles. i felt disgusting, and i washed it three times and took a 90-minute shower. i didn't think it was possible to run a hotel's hot water out, but if you have hair like i do, it's completely doable. i ran out of hot water halfway through and had to turn the water off and finish combing through my hair while i waited for the hot water to replenish itself. needless to say, it was one of the most glorious showers i've had in a very long time. the last time it took me that long to take a shower was back on spring break of 2006 when i'd spent an entire week on a dive boat in the bahamas without any conditioner. i have yet to do my laundry. it's sitting here in a bag beside me in the library... it's quite disgusting. i went to goodwill today and specifically bought a $6.50 outfit to wear while i do my laundry so i can wash every bit of clothing i have.
crazy man and i went to pizza plus last night and spent an hour and a half there eating. we both had two platefuls of salad and a pizza sub with chips and lots to drink. i'm eating so much. a few days ago, we hiked through an extremely dry section of trail. swayze was able to drink a little bit from streams that were almost dried up, but i hiked sixteen miles on less than 2 liters of water. on any given day, i drink at least four, if not five liters. thank God it was very windy and cool that day; otherwise, i think i would have been even more grumpy than i already was. anyways... there was a gas station/deli half a mile off the trail and all i could think about the last five or ten miles was a turkey and swiss sub, a bag of cheetos, a big glass of water, and a root beer float. when i got to the store, i ordered my turkey sandwich, bought the biggest bag of cheetos i could find, a 24 oz. sprite and when i was done with all of that, i went for another 24 oz. sprite, a pint of ice cream, and a root beer and made my own root beer float. :) it's crazy, but i've lost right at 20 pounds out here and i can eat whatever the heck i want. i will have to join a gym as soon as i set foot off the trail. no doubt about that. it doesn't come without downsides, though... suffice it to say, my waistline isn't the only thing that's gotten smaller. :( hahaha
i'm beginning to get worried that i won't reach katahdin on time. we're going to have to step up our pace. i've heard that there are days in the whites in new hampshire where five miles is a good day. the most we've done thus far has been 24, and that wore us out mentally as well as physically, mainly because we weren't prepared for it. i'd woken up that morning thinking we would do 14, but when we got to the hostel that we wanted to stay at, they were going to charge me $32 roundtrip to take us into town that was only 10 miles away, so i said, "screw it. i'll walk the ten miles." and we did. like i said... it wore us out, but i wasn't $32 in the hole like they thought i'd be.
i can easily see how people get the "virginia blues." all we do is walk in the woods and over rocks. in georgia and north carolina and tennessee, we'd climb a really big hill and have some grand view that made it all worth it. in virginia thus far, we just walk a lot and loodk at trees. granted, grayson highlands and white top were gorgeous... i know not everyday can be an albert mountain or a charlie's bunion, but hopefully virginia will give us a few more photo ops in the next stretch.
speaking of photos, i'm trying to get some on facebook. i've got roughly 80 up, but i've got over 1,000 pics on the camera and all the computers i've been on take forever to upload them. enjoy them as they come. :)
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