Day 87: Wetland Sanctuary

Day 87, 7/24/23

High Point State Park to Stealth Tentsite

16.3 miles, mile 1,356.1

I slept in pretty late this morning and then made some coffee and ate waffles, which were delicious. I will miss a good breakfast and cup of coffee when I’m back on trail. After hanging out for a bit and getting everything packed up we left the rental house at 10:45am and got to the state park around 11am. We said our goodbyes and got hiking. The trail for the first half of the day was buggy and rocky. After about 10 miles we had a bit of a road walk and then went into a wildlife sanctuary. It was a wetlands area and was the coolest thing on trail we have seen in a long time. The trail was wide, flat, even, and grassy and to our left was a beautiful wetland area. We saw herons, egrets, bunnies, a gopher, deer, and tons of other birds.

After we went back into the woods the bugs came back full force because it was a boggy area with wooden boards to walk on. The majority of the elevation for the day was on the climb out of the wetland area, and when we were 15 miles in we saw where we were this morning because High Point State Park has a big monument that we could see across the valley. The original plan was to go 0.3 further than we are to the next water source and then keep going until we found a good place to camp, but when we got to this stream and the mosquitos swarmed us, we called it early around 5:30pm.