August 28, day 8
(Our 47th Wedding Anniversary)
It was nice to wake up to a bit of warmth this morning.
As we were getting ready to leave Devil's Dream camp, a fellow came by our camp on the trail and introduced himself to us. We found out that he was the same age as my husband (66) and that our next camps were all at the same places. Fun!
As we were getting ready to leave Devil's Dream camp, a fellow came by our camp on the trail and introduced himself to us. We found out that he was the same age as my husband (66) and that our next camps were all at the same places. Fun!
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We found another large mushroom (boot for scale)
We crossed Pyramid and Kautz creeks today.
This mushroom was growing so fast it had burst out of the moss.
As we crossed Kautz creek we got a nice view of Rainier.
It was a wide and rocky crossing, I'm glad there were cairns.
Finally across and time to hike back up into the forest.
Nearly at Longmire for our cache pickup.
As we were walking along and nearly at the Longmire ranger station to pick up our cache, part of a tree fell just to the right of me in the forest. Yikes! We had just finished talking about how people don't go out and do things like this because they are worried about getting hurt, like a branch falling on their heads. Crazy timing!
A road crossing to resume our trail progress.
The ranger at the Longmire station graciously took our Anniversary photo in the ranger station.
We found another cooperative soul to take our photo in front of the store with the mountain behind us. The sun was so bright to my mole eyes that I could hardly see.
A welcome rest stop in the warmth of Longmire. We bought gatorades and ice cream to celebrate our anniversary. Then is was time to throw out the trash we'd accumulated on the trail and refill our bear barrels for the last 4 days of our trip.
My husband said he forgot to get something in the store and said he'd be right back, he surprised me with a map handkerchief of the Wonderland trail.
Such a sweet gift. ❤
Time to get on the trail as we needed to hike to Cougar rock campground for the night.
Another road crossing to the campground.
This sign is very deceiving, we roamed around for about a mile in the campground before we found some other Wonderland trail hikers with a map. They led us to the Wilderness group site.
Our trail friend (Ken) that we had met in the morning when we left Devil's Dream, had already arrived at camp. He'd heard that it was hard to find the Wilderness group site at Cougar rock CG, so he had gone to a Kiosk and gotten a camp map. He's smarter than us.
After a frustratingly exhausting end to our day, we made a nice camp at Cougar rock.
After a frustratingly exhausting end to our day, we made a nice camp at Cougar rock.
Happy 47th Anniversary to us ❤.
Relive video of our route:
Garmin stats:
total miles hiked - 9.73 (about 1 mile added roaming around the CG)
total ascent - 994 feet
total descent - 2904 feet
Day 9 to be continued
It looked like it was a magnificent (if occasionally frustrating) anniversary! :-)
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to be there again ❤️
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