(voice is sounding noticably different – whispery, raspy) I think it’s Friday, May 17th today. We ah saw some dates in the trail register that made us think maybe it was the 18th but I’m gonna stick with the 17th for now. Um, easy water day because we passed two springs that didn’t require filtering at all. Just drank right from the spring. And ah, we’ve done that pretty much from any spring that is high up or comes… is captured and piped. Unless its got a note on it saying to do otherwise like at Golden Oaks. But ah, we got up, and it was foggy. And it was really cool, cause it was really the first fog we’ve walked in since the morning we hit Mt. Laguna. Which was like the third day into the trip, so… We ah, we’re walking these, along the ridge, and we did a climb. All the plant, it was grassy. And kind of knolls, and hills. And ah, we got really wet, our shoes got really wet. The trail kept plowing through bushes, there was all kind of water condensed on the bushes and we got really wet. But it was kinda nice, and visibility was about 100 feet probably. Gave you that nice enclosed feeling. Like ah you’ve got the whole place to yourself. I enjoyed it. And it was cool. And it lasted that way until breakfast, about 3 1/2 miles. And ah, breakfast we ate at Williams Pass, which was kind of a high point, geographically. And we started going down the other side and the sky cleared up and the sun started shining. And the rest of the day was pretty much sunny. And ah (weird gulping sound) lemme see, see if i can remember. Well I was thinking mostly about Camella today. Cause she had her surgery or was scheduled to have her surgery on her sinuses, and ah, I just thought of her over and over again. Kept imagining holding her hand, and giving her hugs. And doing pretty much the only things I could do being so far away. Hoping her mom got down there okay, and that ah she’s now fast asleep, and her nose is all fixed, and she’ll be successfully recovering for the next few days. I can’t wait to call and find out how she’s doing. So that was really on my mind all day long, off and on. And ah, (gulping) in between, thinking about that, I had just some good conversation with Peter about ourselves and our parents. Kinda how they influenced us.

The first spring, Robin Bird spring was perfectly good, and we got water there. That was about 9 miles into the day, and we had kind of a quick short lunch there, but we didn’t eat all our lunch. As an experiment we split it into two. Then went 5 more miles to Water Hole spring and camp. And expecting to find a pipe spring there, and we didn’t find one. But ah, luckily, about two miles further on, there was one last camp, with ah, with a piped ah, tanked and piped spring. So we took a big old drink there, and filled up our bottles, and ah… the packs were heavy, oh my god. All day long, pretty much, they weighed us down, but just especially towards the end of the day. A heavy pack just pounds the feet, and the legs, and makes the back ache, and every mile feels like three miles. And ah, that second spring was about 15 miles into the day. And we did about two more miles on top of that and we’re just startin to feel wrecked. And ah, we managed to pull a couple more after that out of the day to make, if not a 20 mile, pretty close. And ah, kind of just picked a, a little flat spot here by a tree. Kind of in a, in a little wash, to camp, and we were so, so ah discouraged with our heavy packs, both during lunch and dinner but mostly during dinner today we just decided to eat all the extra weight. Eat all the stupid stuff we got down to a reasonable level. To about the amount of stuff we should have had, so I think we pretty successfully ah, ate all our extra food, and I enjoyed doing it immensely. And ah, the days ahead we’ll have enough food. It certainly won’t make for meal after satifying meal, but we’ll ah have enough to get through with relative comfort, I think, and hopefully the packs won’t be quite so unreasonably heavy.

Ah, tomorrow’s the day when we start experiencing our water scrape. We’ve got maybe 9 miles to go to Willow Creek, or Willow Spring, or something like that. And that water is almost two miles off the trail. And it’s not a, not piped, and it’s got cattle around it. So we’re just gonna have to pull something out of our hats there, and maybe spend some time boiling water early in the day or around lunch tommorrow. And hopefully we’ll load up there for 22 miles to the next reliable source of water. And so, that’s the adventure for tommorrow, and we’ll hear all about it when I’m again snug in my sleeping bag. Hopefully not too dehydrated.