Today was wild pony day! The ponies seem to use the hikers like salt licks, wandering up to hikers to lick their sweaty arms and legs all day long. I’ll probably need to come back here with Kacy at some point, enjoy the photos.
On top of the ponies, the views were gorgeous. We climbed back into the highlands, passed through a field speckled with flowers, and negotiated “Fat Man’s Squeeze”.
El Dorado and Peanut have packages at the Marion post office, so they left us to do some extra miles. The post office is only open from 9-10:45am on Saturday, so they have to make sure they’re able to get there instead of waiting until Monday. They’ll have to do 20+ miles today and tomorrow to get there in time. In the meantime, the rest of us stopped to capture the 500 mile marker.
We also took a break at a local store for lunch, which turned into a 3 hour affair with multiple beers. It was a 15 min shuttle ride each way and the credit card machine went down, so paying was delayed. Prairie Dog hiked out a bag of wine to keep sipping on the trail.
Eventually it turned into a slightly sloppy hike with all of us buzzed. We made it into camp around 9:30 pm, got a fire going, and cooked dinner in the dark. Prairie Dog passed out before dinner and we ended up hanging his bear bag for him. It’s after 11 pm now and I’m headed to bed. Hopefully we can keep up these 15-20 mile days without injuries or losing anyone.
Day 49 Mileage: 17.4 mi [V.A. 600 Elk Garden -> V.A. 603 Fairwood Road]
Total Mileage: 520.2 mi