Today will be our longest hike and hardest day of the trip, probably 11-12 miles on the trail. We left Webster Parks around 7:30AM, saw some huge plants on the way down, and quickly made it to Fishing Lodge to drop off trash and get water. Matthew and I played horseshoes during our break. One of the staff asked where the 4th horseshoe was but we couldn't find it. While we were playing one of my shots hit a branch, and then the 4th horseshoe fell out of the tree! It was comical!
Once our water was full we started hiking to Clark's Fort, where we planning on having lunch. We hiked through a tree farm demonstration area. We saw a beautiful view of this pond. We got to Clark's Fort, and it was only 9:30! Too early for lunch. We had a meeting to talk about the fact that this was the last place we could get water, and we had planned to cook our dinner for lunch using water from the campground because we wouldn't have any water source in the evening. We decided to fill our water jugs with several gallons and have the adults (Mike and Steve) carry them in their packs. The kids played a little horseshoes, I spoke with a staff member at Clark's Fort about Scotland (he grew up near Pitlochry), and we hiked up to Upper Clark campground, where we made "dinner" for lunch. Carter and Matthew washed up the dishes and we took off again.
It felt like hiking after a Thanksgiving meal, we were so full. It took a while to get into a rythym but the view started to become more and more spectacular. Spencer was struggling so we split his pack, and then we really started making great time. We stopped on Tooth Ridge at 3:15 to enjoy a fantastic view, and talk started turing to thoughts of home.
We thought we were close to our campground, but we still were about 2 hours away! The terrain was really rough, especially for MikeH, who still had gallons of water sloshing around the top of his backpack!
We made it to the Tooth Ridge campground at 5:30, and had dinner (our lunch!). Spirits lifted because we had made it through our hardest day. I went to the bathroom on one of those "open-air thrones" and noticed that we were near some sort of ridge, and went over to see an absolutely gorgeous view of the base camp, Uracca, and the plains. I went back to camp and told the scouts, who were watching nine deer frolic around the campground (including 4 fawns). Matthew, Ray, Adam, MikeB, and myself went back over to the ridge and watched the activity for about an hour,especially the lightning off in the distance, which we could see but not hear. We also watched the lights come on in the towns throughout the plains. It was hard to leave because it was so beautiful, but we had an early pre-dawn hike tomorrow to get to the top of the Tooth of Time on our final day on the trail!
