July 15th
It felt good to be cleaned up. I was all set and went to the restaurant to get a breakfast burrito to go. Nancy made a delicious one and I went over to the highway to hitch.
Two and a half hours later, I finally got a ride. I am doomed for hitchiking. Humans are very good at quickly asessing situations and categorizing. When they see a middle aged man with a white beard, the immediate thought: at this age, why cant he get his own transportation? Must be homeless or broke. Or on parole.
The guy who eventually gave me a ride was on vacation, trying to catch cutthroat trout in seldom fished streams. Small world: he had been in commercial real estate and was familiar with the company I worked for in Houston.
I started hiking around 10. It was mostly thick, young trees. I noticed something brown and large ahead on my right. It was moving towards the trail. I froze. An elk or moose. I slowly reached for my camera. It was a bull elk. He heard me unsnap my camera case. We both stood still. Eventually, he continued on toward the trail. I was able to start the movie function on my camera, but it wasn’t zoomed in enough. He did poke through the trees, took about 2 seconds to recognize me, and bolted.
The rest of the day was spent feeding the mosquitos and flies. Poor things.
I ended up doing about 18 miles and managed to end up camping at a ridge line which meant a nice breeze. One other through hiker came through and camped but I didn’t catch his name.
backpacking over the hill 