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Day 140: a little lazy

Day 140
Miles: 18
From small creek to mirror lake

At first glance the morning looks as miserable as the day before, thick with heavy fog, the underside of our tarp drenched with condensation. And then a brilliant beam of light bursts into our little blue silnylon bedroom. The sun!

It doesn’t last long – as soon as the sun rises above the ceiling of clouds it’s back to gray – but it’s not raining. I’ll take it. We get up and start packing up our soggy camp, put on damp clothes and wet shoes. Crackerjack, 3D, Tintin, and Smokey all made camp with us at the same like creek-side and it’s a cheerful morning. Crackerjack has his music playing, and despite being from Germany, his playlist is an exact replica of my favorite radio station as a freshman in high school.
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Day 139: nothin’ to see here folks, move it along

Day 139
Miles: 25
Small creek to more of the same

As soon as my exhaustion has abated, I wake up. I feel tired and dirty and sticky. My crotch feels dirty and sticky. Unwashed. Itchy. I’m unbearably uncomfortable, and I toss and rearrange myself until J wakes up to. “What’s going on?” he murmurs.
  “It’s two in the morning, but all I can think about is washing my crotch,” I whisper.
  “Maybe washing your crotch at two in the morning is what you need to do then,” he mumbles back, turning over.
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Day 138: Fall in the high country

Day 138
Miles: 21
From Dewey Lake to small creek

The lake is quivering but still this morning, the sky grayer than yesterday. We can still hear the elk calling to each other like they did last night, an eerie serenade. Having not seen an elk in the act of bugling (or, any elk at all), I still have a hard time believing that these alien cries come from a furry earth-bound herbivore.

The low skies of the morning just remind us of the weather forecast we looked at back at White Pass. Forecast: rain’s a’comin. In the Northwest, once the rain starts… that might be it for our blue skies until spring. Or it might not. We talk about it with our fellow hikers when we cross paths on the trail, optimistically framed – “Well, wouldn’t want to have carried this damn umbrella for 2000 miles for nothing!” we tell each other.
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