Day 84

War Spur Shelter to Eastern Continental Divide 15.8 miles AT mile 685.4

Card of the day – 10 of swords

Last night lead to another good nights sleep and I’m feeling good.  It was a little cold just after dawn but I just snuggled down into my sleeping bag.

This meant I was out at my now usual time of 8.30!

For once there was a road crossing with no stairs!  Maybe the trail gods are starting to smile on me after all?

There were more big blowdowns, making the going slow, but such is life.

I came upon a massive steep hill with no switch backs.  I complain when I get them and complain when I don’t!  There really is no pleasing me.

The next obstacle was a sit of nice new stairs!  For once I actually started to think about how much work goes into creating these things.  I need to stop complaining.  It’s volunteers that do this work and some one has to pay for it all.

Kelly’s knob was epic but there was a gap of about half a meter with a big drop and I was up there on my own so chicked out, then a bird popped on me!  Isn’t that supposed to be lucky?  PutPut Wolverine and Flash turned up and I found a way over using a ledge instead of jumping the gap.

We were visited by two big black birds who just sat there looking at us and being like, yeh? What do you want?

Down from the knob we went through meddows and some old farm buildings.

The breeze was amazing on the hot day, and I could not resist looking back over where we came from, and seeing the ridges we still have to go.

“Seven!”  Yep I fell on my backside, I’ve no idea how, but there we have it.

The next treat was the Kefer Oak, reposted to be one of the oldest trees on the trail.  I sat there and just chilled with it for a while.

I came to some more stairs up the mountain, and trying to remember my epiphany from earlier tried my hardest not to complain.  But they seriously hurt.  We were at least treated to a nice view at top.

Moving along I bumped into a dear, we seem to be seeing a lot of them lately.  This was in a landscape of cairns, maybe 20 of them, with no one really knowing why they are there?  On TimeTeam they would have described them at being for ritual I’m sure.

I went down to Sarver Hollow Shelter and back up! About a mile.  The Water there was no good and there is an abandoned village down there.  That with loads of deer made me not want to stay.  Speaking to some locals the day after they reported that it’s supposed to be haunted, and it definitely felt that way.

Now being almost with out water I had to make it to the next source.

I bumped into wolverine and flash and we made plans to hit Salem tomorrow instead!  They said the magic words “beer and burgers”.  I’m so easily persuaded.

We made it to the Eastern Continental Divide where we set camp and had dinner.  Wolverine made a fire and we just chilled.  It was probably a much better evening than I would have had at the shelter and tomorrow I get town food!