Today's miles: 25
Total miles: 1956
Treekiller, Sunshine and I woke up at 6:00 this morning to a cool, delightful breeze blowing off Charlton Lake and into our tents. The morning was overcast and the sunrise beautiful, and we were packed up and on trail by 7:00, the best time we've had all week.
The trail today was very mellow. We had no steep climbs or descents, so we were in cruise mode. Lately I've been finding my stride, my speed and my strength on trail, and it lets me fly. The boys let me take the lead and I enjoyed being in front for once. It allowed me to have control over break times, and I dutifully stopped every five miles, or two hours, for a short break and let the boys catch up. In this respect the miles for the day went by very quickly. I put in my favorite podcasts, and by the time two of them had run through, it was time for another break. By lunchtime we only had 15 miles total left to Elk Lake to do by tomorrow morning. We were in high spirits about how well we were doing. Our shorter mileage yesterday had done wonders for our aching muscles and we were feeling great.
It was overcast all day, which meant the heat wasn't as brutal, and this, too, made a big difference. By 7:30 we had gone 25 miles and arrived at a small running stream with a flat area for camping. The stream was a treat: for the past few days we had been filtering all of our water from lakes, which sometimes could be quite dirty. (This morning I collected lake water that had tiny, swimming red plankton in it. Thank goodness for water filters....)
We set up camp and hurried inside our tents since the mosquitoes near the water were pretty bad. Treekiller pushed over a few trees before bed and we chatted tent to tent about our excitement for Bend tomorrow.