Another beautiful day at Philmont as the sun rises on Uracca.
I went to bed with the hope that my altitude sickness would be gone for today’s hike. I woke up three times during the night to go to the bathroom (I was drinking a ton of water to make sure I wasn’t dehydrated), and each time I woke up I felt horrible. At 3:15 AM I got up the last time and just prayed I’d feel better for breakfast, fell into a deep sleep, and woke up with a fading headache. I was good to go! When AJ offered me some of his special Puerto Rican coffee, that was the miracle that brought me back to 100%
We ate a dry breakfast so we didn’t have to wash dishes, broke camp, and bid AJ adieu. He was done instructing us and headed back to base camp. Off he went, playing his guitar. He told us that he and a “cello” friend of his were forming a band called “In The Shade”. We had a good laugh at the “Solar Steve” / “In The Shade” juxtaposition. We’ll have to look him up on MySpace when we get back. He was a great ranger to have and told the advisor’s last night that we were doing a good job stepping back and letting the scouts run themselves. He’s seen instances where that’s not always the case, and that’s too bad.
The trail to Bear Caves had some incredible views:
As we hiked we missed not having AJ and his guitar playing behind us as we walked. We had a much better rythym walking to Bear Caves, which is a lot more rustic. The toilets had no walls, and one of the thrones was open-air, right on the edge of a meadow in full view of people hiking or camping within the campground. We set up our dining fly and bear bags pretty quickly, because it looked like afternoon rain was coming (the normal 2PM booming thunder). Matthew crashed immediately in the tent for a couple of hours.
This place is absolutely buzzing with bees, and it’s kind of creepy because you can hear them no matter where you are standing in the campground. Bear Caves is unstaffed, and there was a several mile hike up a nearby mountain for some views (and some bear caves, I would imagine), but everyone was crashed in the tent so nobody checked it out. Some of the boys came out of their tents and started hitting MikeB’s squishy ball around again. We dubbed the game “VolleySquish”, and MikeB took out his sharpy and wrote “Volley” and “Squish” on the ball.
MikeB and MattG got bloody noses at this campground (another side effect of altitude). Matt got his at 4AM and asked Carter what to do. Carter advised him to “get out of the tent”.
After dinner and more VolleySquish we sat around talking, did “Roses, Thorns, and Buds”, had our leadership meeting, and then Matthew and I went back to the tent and filled out the names of all the people that had said the Philmont grace to this point. Everyone on the list would be elegible for the “Duty To God” patch once Matthew did his third devotion on the trail (which he would accomplish tomorrow).
