Week Three, and stuff

Hey Yall! Its me, the girl who falls all the time, has no idea what she is doing and changes her mood about 37 time a day. Yep, I'm a gem :)

Lets see, I'm not good like Andrew with his nightly journaling. I basically get to camp, elevate my feet, eat as quickly as possible and fall asleep within the first few pages of Harry Potter. So I'll do my best on catch up, but you have been warned this will be both scattered and random.

Last post I complained about, well a whole freaking lot, and you will all be happy to learn.....I still have all those complaints. No, I kid, I kid... things are getting a bit brighter. First off, the view and landscape of Maine continue to be unreal. And of course we have no pictures to show you, that would be helpful, but trust us, our eyeballs are dancing in delight on a daily basis. Andrew had a birthday a few days ago (huzzah he is 30!) and we had a tent site on a large flat rock right over a massive lake. So we listened to loons (which sound like wolves at times and wacky birds at others) and had a cool lake breeze blowing on us all night. Plus I snuck come Reeses big cups into my food bag and surprised him with chocolate peanut butter goodness. I know its not much, but out in the woods, every unexpected treat means the world.

Lets see, in general Andrew is a still a rockstar, happy energetic, and because of the "slower pace" I need to take has very little muscle and joint pain compared to many other hikers (the beginning is often painful). Right now we are hiking about 8-10 mile days, every now and then we do a short 5 mile or a long 12 mile day. The 15-25 mile days that so many of the hikers we meet talk about still seem insane to me, but I know I must find a way to get there or we will be hiking this damn trail until spring. And by damn trail, I mean really freakin incredible challenging trail I hate/love depending on what minute it is. 

My ankles and knees continue to have serious problems with the vagabond lifestyle. I'm assuming if they could speak they would say things like, "WTF, we are used to sitting around watching 'Parks and Rec,' then cooking for 4 hours, and then more sitting, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?" I'm pretty sure I have plantar fascitis in both feet, which basically means that my feet hurt a lot at least 50% of the time. I was fairly sure I had it in my right foot before we left, but my left foot is catching up, so a typical day for my feet goes as such: Wake up and they hurt A LOT. The first few steps of the morning feel like my foot is a massive bruise and every step is terrible. Then they feel ok until I put my shoes and pack on. (For anyone who cares, The hiking shoe I'm wearing is a men's running shoe with a 'Superfeet' insole, which may or may not be a good thing. Sadly, finding an outdoor store is almost impossible out here, much less one that has a perfect shoe for my incredibly wide, flat foot. I could not find a women's hking shoe that fit my foot, and I tried three stores in Asheville before we left. Anyway, shoe tangent end). So the first mile of walking is pretty painful, but bearable. Then my feet warm up and I have about 5-7 miles that are ok, of course depending on climbs, terrain, etc. Then pretty much regardless around mile 7-9 my feet start feeling like massive bruises again and it just gets more and more painful until I stop walking. As you can imagine, THIS IS REALLY FRUSTRATING. I continue to try and "ice" my feet and ankles (aka put them in all the cold Maine rivers and elevate them when possible) but the people I talk to with feet issues, specifially PF(plantars) have stated it just hurts and always kinda will. So great......or NOT great at all. I do feel stronger in my legs, but still anything over 10 miles is so overwhelming mentally and physically. Sigh.

Speaking of lakes, here is a funny/gross story. About four days ago Andrew and I were stopping for lunch at a ford (where you have to take your shoes off, croc up, and cross a river) when we spotted a cooler! In the woods coolers usually mean trail magic, and as it happens we stumbled apon the last two sodas in the cooler! That lifted our spirits tremendously as we crossed the river, and then decided to enjoy our sodas and lunch on the rocks with our feet soaking in the river. We both commented on how warm the water was, noting it was probably because it was kinda slow moving. We sat eating bagels, cheese, and fritos and talking to some lady NOBOs (Trail names Fruit Loop and Rook) that crossed the river as we lunched. We talked to them for a while, as I especially tried to pick their brains about hiking the trail as a female, clothes that work for them etc (All my clothes are wrong for the trail, lots of chaffing, etc, but anyhoo) I made them laugh about the common "pain is weakness leaving your body" macho mentality of many of the hikers on the trail and they tried to assure me things will get better, ladies can do this, and everyone has a hard time in the beginning. We headed toward our packs, our spirits particularly high after the great convo and the much needed sugar-rush from the cola, and sat down to dry our feet and return them to the smelly grossness that is a hiking shoe when I noticed a quarter sized brown spot on my upper calf. At first I thought it was dirt, so I went to wipe it off, but it wouldn't budge. Why? Because it was a LEECH!!! Andrew was a few feet away, but I would have screamed regardless. "UGHHH!!!!! LEECHES baby!" -I shudder as I begin to scan my legs and discover they are EVERYWHERE. I have several larger ones on my legs and then my feet are covered in tiny pinky nail size ones. By covered I mean, literally, between every toe. Leeches, as I discovered, are slipperly little bastards that are very hard to get off. I start trying to breathe deep, because I can feel the panic attack rising up inside me. Andrew, winning boyfriend of the year, comes over and helps me pry off these mini demons, trying and failing not to laugh at the overdramatic reaction that I am of course having at the site of my feet covered in leeches. He then looks at his own feet and has a few, but not nearly the leech-fest covering my poor tootsies. Also fun fact, even though leeches don't hurt, the cuts they make to suck yer blood do not seem to stop bleeding. Like, ever.

Switching to a better note, I do feel like I am getting stronger. I still feel insane most days, but I'm getting more used to sleeping outside, eating total junk food (sounds good, but honestly all we want most days are fruits and vegetables, junk food makes you feel gross, but it's cheap and light), and spending my days pushing my body to it's limit. Yesterday was actually a pretty acurate example of what hiking the AT is like. We woke up around 6am to a wet tent, not because it rained, but we camped in a grassy field so our tent was covered in dew. So we had to wait a while until the sun came out and dry it so we didn't have to unpack a wet tent that night. Hence we got a late start and about 10 minutes into walking we discovered a giant field of blueberries!! So clearly we stopped and picked about 2 cups of blueberries, giddily joking about how "one goes in the cup, and one goes in the mouth" and saved them for the top of the mountain we were about to climb. We set out to do a 8-10 mile day or so, and knew we had a long 5 mile mountain to climb. I was feeling good for the first three miles, struggling to climb the mountain, but keeping a slow and steady pace up the tedious upward climb. Then the last two miles just started breaking my spirit. Just when we would reach a peak, we would descend a few hundred feet, only to climb another 500 feet or so (Please note most mountains are like this. Its not just ONE big climb, it's lots of up and down, freakin mountains....) Once we reached the top, my feet and ankles were screaming, and I felt tired more than excited at the beautiful view. Andrew was pumped up and full of energy, which I could not fully appreciate in my exhausted state. The blueberries and the view eventually brought up my mood, though I still get so frustrated/sad/stupidly hard on myself when I let a hard climb sour my mood. The descent down the mountain was a short and steep 1.3 miles which is easier on the muscles, but much harder on the joints. And we have to take them slow because it is a rooty, rocky shit show and you don't want to break anything. We then arrived at a lean-to for a quick snack break and foot elevation, but decided to push on, hoping to get as close to Caratunk as possible as to make our walk in the morning a short one. Since we had no pre-designated tent site, we ended up walking an extra 5 miles until we found anything resembling a flat surface to tent on, making our day a 12 mile one. The last two miles I was in pretty unreasonable amounts of pain, and pushed on because I knew if I just dropped down on the trail the mosquitoes would eat me alive. We started setting up camp around 7:30 aka mosquitos buffet hour. I could barely stand, and even with bug spray was being attacked by those tiny blood suckers so stuffed half a bagel and a fruit snack in my mouth before retreating for the tent, leaving myself without enough food. Andrew braved the conditions a little longer, managing to eat an actual dinner of salmon and crackers, while I flossed and brushed inside the safety of tent. Then we set up the inside of the tent and I lay down and tried to quietly weep because even while lying down my feet were spasming (or something, Im still not sure what is going on). The best way I can describe the pain is if you have a bruise and someone punches it, that immediate pain, it feels like that is rippling up and down my foot. Andrew kindly offered to rub them, but I was in so much pain, I just tried to fall asleep. So yeah, that's kinda a day on the trail, beautiful one moment, painful the next, always an adventure. Man, I sound kinda like a downer. I'm working on it yall, I really am. This is hard stuff.

And just in case yall are wondering a typical day for us food wise goes a little something like:
Breakfast: Poptarts for me, Oatmeal for Andrew
Snack: Snickers and GORP (luckily that is almonds and nuts we get sent from home, with some raisins and peanut butter M &Ms)
Lunch: bagel with cheese or salmon, fritos or chips, perhaps some jerky
Snack: Jerky, GORP, Lara bar when we are luckily
Dinner: Lipton sides (which are, for the record pretty gross. But again light to carry and filling) or mac and cheese.
Sometimes we get a dark chocolate bar as a treat, but in general, we just eat crap. If anyone would be interested in sending us delicious (and lightwieght) camping meals, treats, snickers (the perfect hiker snack), delicous fruit and nut bars (like lara bars or pro-bars) etc, just comment on the blog or email us and we can let you know the next post office we will be hitting.

Ok I can't write anymore, I have an ice bag calling my name. As always we will post when we can, thank you for keeping up on our adventures. Love the comments, please keep them coming.