The 4C Trail, 3 new boxes on a hike, GC'ing without trying, and Hoolie-hoolies

As y'all know, I don't usually accompany Fearless Fox and Lightning on their overnight hikes. Sometimes I pick them up at the end of the trail, but most of the time I use the weekend to do "my thing", which is usually letterboxing if I don't have scout commitments.Well I recently decided I needed to try to make at least one overnight hike with them, so I did it this past weekend. We debated where and how far to go, but finally decided to stay close to home and hike the 4Cs Trail so Lightning could finish it up (he'd previously backpacked the lower 2/3's of it). If you want to look up more information about the trail, you can google it by its proper name - the Four C National Recreation Trail, or you can just follow this link: http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_trail/tx_crock.htm

We packed up Friday evening, knocked out a commitment Saturday morning and headed out around noon for Alto and points beyond. We planned to do at least 6 miles total on the trail, but it was doubtful I could make the 12 round trip, so we took two vehicles and dropped one at each end, then started at the northern-most point of the trail - Neches Bluff. Now Fearless Fox didn't want to overburden me, so he took on some of my weight and Lightning took on some too. I, on the other hand, carried three letterboxes (hehe - bulky but light), 3 raw wrapped potatoes, clothing, a little water (we didn't carry much because we have a filter) and some of the camp gear we would need when we stopped for the night. I also carried a printout of Ryan's current adventures on the Florida Trail to read after we settled in, along with some geocaching clues (there were no letterboxes on this trail). My pack, after all was said and done, weighed in around 18 pounds. I normally carry about 10 in my letterboxing backpack and I don't normally go more than about 3 miles round trip at most, so I was in for a challenge!

We stepped off and within 500 feet of the trailhead we had a geocache to look for. Now it is quite a lot different hunting for stashes with a backpack on. FF and Lightning were both way too loaded (their packs - NOT them) to be able to bend over and hunt, and I had not managed to get used to the weight or get it distributed properly, so there we were, staggering around like drunks looking for a cache - in the woods, full of leaves and pine straw, with nothing but coordinates to tell us where it was. Five minutes of bushwhacking and running late getting on the trail besides (if you must know, we were late because I asked that we stop off at Mission Tejas for one last bathroom stop before we hit the trail - I know, I know - WIMP!), we decided to leave that geocache behind and move on. Another 600 feet and we were closing in on another geocache! Still wobbly, we decided it would be best to get some distance behind us so we could all get our feet and get a pace going (stopping to find stuff really throws a hitch in getting stretched out on the trail). Besides that, I was finding it too distracting from the scenery to keep watching my GPSr.

Now let me tell you - anyone who wants to say East Texas is flat is LYING! We may not have mountains, but we sure have some tall hills. The 4Cs begins on a bluff (Neches Bluff) and you walk along the ridge for a good while. While we walked along the ridge, I looked out over some beautiful valleys and I couldn't help but wondering how far down they really go because I could see down to one rise, and then maybe down to another, but I was pretty sure I wasn't seeing down to the bottom. I'm thinking most folks don't know about these lovely valleys because they usually hike the trail during green seasons and all those leafy trees hide the heights you are really at.

Anyway, we trucked along for awhile and struck a rhythm, stopped a couple times to adjust our packs, then made a turn and looked out on a stunning view. We decided this view was the perfect backdrop for the first box, so I dropped my pack and dug around until I found one of the boxes. Now realize, I had just kind of thrown my stuff in because I wound up with a few specifics, but basically caught leftovers from their packs. I knew in the beginning that I would be the one to carry the boxes, so they went in first. I'm sure y'all realized this, but it didn't quite occur to me sitting on the floor in my kitchen that you don't necessarily pack in the order you know what you'll be carrying. Fearless Fox almost certainly was paying attention to my packing and I can't help thinking he was sitting there smirking silently while thinking "Newbie!". I wound up completely unpacking my pack, grabbing a box, then repacking my bag - this time with a little more logic to the order of things. This became a repeated event several times throughout the trip.

We got the first box hidden and we were walking away when FF noticed a GC in plain view. I scrambled out my GC pages to see which we might have found, noted it, we signed the log and moved on. So yeah, the first box is not very far from a geocache. We'll see how that goes.

We cruised along for a little while longer until we came to another notable view with a distinctive feature - great place for the second box. By now I had had time to think about how I had repacked my bag, so I dropped it again dug to grab the box and I repacked yet again while FF hid the box. Satisfied with this second hide, I put my pack back on and off we went. Later, sitting around the campfire and looking at my GC pages, I realized we had missed another GC that was at the location of the second box. Interestingly, we had pretty thoroughly searched around the obvious sorts of places and ruled them out, so I'm thinking the GC might have either been missing or another bushwhacking venture.

My intent had been to place two boxes in fairly close, but not too close, proximity to the trailhead. The trail from the outset is a bit of a challenge compared to the many flat trails you can find in East Texas. Lots of up and down...At that point, I was content to settle in for the rest of the haul for the day, for which Fearless Fox and Lightning were glad. My backpack, after two repacks, felt a whole lot better, I had adjusted my shoelaces a couple of times, and we had all stretched out and gotten a rhythm going. Shortly before the second box, we had started a fast decline from the bluff, following switchbacks and the natural contour of the valley.

It seemed like we had hardly been going at all when we hit flat ground and found ourselves in what one of Lightning's scout leaders affectionately calls The Mile of Mud. If you recall, when I camped with the troop a few weeks ago, we attempted a night cache in the rain. This same leader was very hesitant to go out for that cache, citing the fact that we were very close to The Mile of Mud. He says The Mile of Mud with an omenous haunting innuendo.

Frankly, I was a little curious to see what The Mile of Mud was, and I had my chance on Saturday. Well - you might be disappointed to know that The Mile of Mud is a utility service road. Very primitive, but a road none the less. If you are disappointed by that fact, it is only because you have never SEEN The Mile of Mud. When we first hit it, I wasn't too impressed by the puddles here and there.

The Mile of Mud briefly meets the Neches River before it veers off again and Lighting opted to stop for a backpack break at the river. It was warm this weekend and we were all struggling a little under our loads, so we had broken a sweat and were glad for a break. We all threw off our packs and lay down on the leaves near the river. Fearless Fox had also brought along Snickers bars and I discovered the first reason I LOVE backpacking - guilt-free chocolate! We all shared a bottle of water and talked about what would happen to us if the huge tree leaning precariously across the river with all the exposed roots were to suddenly decide to fall. We tried to figure out how to reach a fishing line that was hanging from another tree overhanging the river without getting wet, but gave up on that because we figured it had been there a long time anyway and we didn't really want to see what might be hung on the hook. After about fifteen minutes, it was time to move on, so we collected our bags and I adjusted my shoelaces again, and off we went to tackle The Mile of Mud.

I soon found out how this place got its name. You could hardly call it an access road! There were huge DEEP puddles that covered the hole road, so that at times we had to run up the hill along the edges to get around the water, and sometimes these puddles were 20 feet long. Where possible, we tromped on through (that's what you are supposed to do if you strictly follow LNT), but most of the time we could stick our walking sticks into the puddle and find the water was 18 inches or more deep. LNT is nice - but sometimes you just have to go around. For much of the time, I was bringing up the rear, so I was following behind the two of them, putting my feet where their feet had just been. This seemed like a good plan most of the time, but sometimes their weight had softened the mud so that when my turn came to pass through, the mud grabbed ahold of my hiking shoes and tried to keep them. Glad I had tightened up my laces! After a half a mile or so of this, I visualized what it must be like to be the leader following behind 15-20 boys. I understood - finally - the level of respect my scout leader friend was expressing by dubbing this stretch The Mile of Mud.

As quickly as we found ourselves on The Mile of Mud, the stretch came to an end and we were at a small pond. At this point it was about 4 p.m. and time to start thinking about where to stop for the night. Running, fresh water was the first criteria, flat ground was the second. This pond was definitely NOT the kind of water we were looking for. We crossed the bridge at the pond and headed up the hill. This particular bridge was only hanging on by a tree - during the Spring deluge the bridge had been picked up off its supports and was going to be carried away by the raging water of the overflowing stream coming off the hill if it had not been rescued by one solitary very strong tree. It was a little humbling to look at the bridge's supports six feet from the bridge itself, which had settled into its rescuer and was still passable, even off its base. There's a lot of power in running water!

We started up the hill, but unlike the easy switchbacks we had experienced coming down off the bluff, this trail led us straight up an equally steep, equally long hill. I had had a pretty easy time of it so far, since we had taken one good long break and a couple of shorter breaks, but the trip up the hill consisted of 30 second stops to catch a breath before continuing on up. Fearless Fox and Lightning were both struggling because they were carrying some of my weight and I was struggling because I was doing the hardest part of the hike thus far in the third mile of the trip carrying almost twice what I normally carried on a 3 mile round trip.

It gets darker faster in heavy woods and Fearless Fox was hunting for a stopping spot for us in earnest. I was strictly an Indian on this trip, so I wasn't going to stop until told to stop and I knew that wouldn't be until he was happy with where we were. I wasn't about to complain, but I really WAS getting tired. I also felt badly that they were carrying some of my weight, but there was nothing to be done about that at the moment.

Finally FF found us a spot that seemed perfect! We dropped our packs and dropped our bodies to rest for a few minutes before we set about gathering wood and setting up camp. I stood up and nearly fell off my feet, which Lightning got a kick out of. He asked if I felt like I could float, and that really was what I felt like.

Before long, we all got up and started gathering deadwood for a fire. We scavenged our way up a hill from where we were and threw wood down toward our camp. Now those of you who know Lightning may be a little surprised by this, but he has aspirations of participating in Track and Field in high school - specifically, he wants to do javelin catching. As far as I know, there aren't many participants in that event and he should do well, especially since he has been practicing. He was downhill from FF, so when FF got ready to throw a tree branch (albeit a dead tree branch) about the size of a man's arm and about four feet long down the hill, he hollered to Lightning to let him know it was coming. Lightning turned around as the branch hurtled down the hill toward him and like - well - like lightning, he reached into the air and snagged it, pulling it into his chest as he caught it. I had heard FF yell, so I turned to see why he yelled just in time to see this all play out. In the in-flight moments, when it was obvious this rather large piece of a tree was about to nail my son - the child who still loves me like I'm perfect - I began thinking "Now how do I blow SOS with a whistle and where IS my whistle?" This might seem like an odd thing to think, maybe a little overdramatic, but in the car on the way to the trail Lightning and I had been practicing our sign language, and once on the trail we had all been spelling things out using morse code and taking turns guessing what was being spelled. Well you know - it's pretty darned hard to play the ABC game on a trail! Anyway, I knew sign language would be highly ineffective to get attention in case of an emergency, so you see, it made good sense that I was thinking about whistling SOS (and as a matter of fact, I knew exactly where my whistle was - strung to the outside of my backpack)! Lightning's wrist was strained a little, but being a good letterboxer, he wasn't about to let a little pain get him down and he and we laughed about it after he shed only the slightest of tears.

We pulled out all the camp gear we needed and set about getting ready to cook supper and set up our tarps. We had made a calculated guess that we could do without a heavy tent in favor of two lighter tarps for cover. We knew we were hanging heavily on the fact that the expected rains would go north of us and we wouldn't get any rain to speak of. We lay one tarp on the ground and strung the other over the first to make a lean-to, then we stretched out our sleeping bags to air out before we went to bed. Home!

I went on to dig the potatoes out of my bag while FF fished the steaks out of his - we had found some frozen ribeyes in the freezer and decided we could carry those in and cook them and they would be a perfect camp meal. Sure enough, they had just defrosted to the point of being cold but pliable - perfect for stabbing with a stick! The guys got the fire going while I reorganized my pack and got out the clothes for all of us that we would later change into. After the fire was blazing (and I wish I could say it was cozy, but it was an unseasonably warm night so it was actually a little uncomfortable), I threw the potatoes down into the flames to bake away. They began steaming almost immediately and threw off a delicious aroma. After sitting around and listening to Lightning read his book of lists to us, we finally decided we should go ahead and cook the steaks. Lightning went off in search of good sticks to hang the steaks on. He came up with a couple and he and Fearless Fox strung the meat on the sticks and started them going. I declared myself the judge of when they would be done, so they would periodically swing the sticks over to me to examine in the light of my headlamp. I had just declared Lightning's done and was about to tell FF to let me take a look at the steak he was cooking, when suddenly it fell off into the fire. Now this was ribeye and we were hungry! He fished it out and we rinsed it off with koolaid and we proceeded to eat it. It tasted just fine, and I think that rinsing it with koolaid served to make it not taste nearly as gritty as if we had not rinsed it off at all. The next steak tasted much better - no grit. Now I have to say - there is nothing better than eating meat cooked over a fire with your fingers. Very primitive. After I finished mine though, I suddenly realized my hands had stuff all over them and I sat there for a minute trying to decide whether to risk going down to the stream and washing them in the unfiltered water, or wasting drinking water, or creating more trash by using up a paper towel. Finally it occurred to me - I had just eaten a steak with my hands so my manners at that point had gone down the gutter for the day. I proceeded to lick my hands clean and it tasted oh so good! (Sorry Mom, I know you taught me better manners than that, and really, I use them most days). The baked potatoes were done about the time my handwashing was finished, so we knocked the potatoes out of the fire to cool. We all three sat staring at them as though we expected them to make a run for it, but they didn't. Finally we convinced Lightning to touch one and see if it was cool enough and he said they were, so we passed them around and opened them up and ate them with stick forks we had made (I learned that the less gear you get dirty, the easier it is to manage camp). Before we had left the house, I had doctored the potatoes with cheese and salt and butter, so that when we opened them they had the rich flavor of a baked potato without having to bring all the fixings with us. Nice. THIS was living like kings and became another thing I love about backpacking!

After cleaning up supper real well (during which Fearless Fox stepped on Lightning's hand - injury #2) so as not to unduly attract night visitors, we settled in to talk and watch the fire. We all had our headlamps on, but left them off to save batteries. It gets DARK way out in the middle of nowhere! Before long, we heard rustling in the woods, like something BIG approaching us. We all kind of eyed each other and decided to ignore the sounds. Things always rustle around in the woods, right? Right.

But at this point, I have to flip back to a few weeks ago when Lightning and Fearless Fox had backpacked a different part of the 4C Trail. FF came home to tell a story about hearing sounds after Lightning had gone to bed in the tent (it was much colder that weekend). FF was reading by the fire, when he started hearing the rustling sounds, but was suddenly alarmed when he heard first one creature start with a loud "hoolie-hoolie" sound, followed by several others - close! He thought they were surrounded at first, since the hoolie-hoolie seemed to come from everywhere! He finally figured out that the racket was coming from the other side of the tent and that Lightning was between him and the unknown noisy intruder. It's a hard decision to know whether to shoo a hoolie-hoolie thing and risk drawing attention to yourself or be quiet and risk it thinking it can conquer your camp. What do you do? Especially if you don't know what goes hoolie-hoolie in the dark? Personally, I clear my throat - nice and noncommital and gives whatever-it-is an easy out if we both pretend I don't know it's there and am only clearing my throat. It went on for a minute or so and finally whatever they were rustled off and hoolie-hoolied further off. He had planned on going to bed soon, but was very uneasy with falling off to sleep, for fear he wouldn't wake up before the hoolie-hoolie things were upon them again. I like to think I'm pretty comfortable camping and not many things frighten me in the wild (wild hawgs being the notable exception), but I couldn't get over his story and I tried to do a little research to see what goes hoolie-hoolie. I was stumped. Whatever it was stayed outside the light of his headlamp, so he had not the slightest idea what it could have been, only that there was more than one of them. As we were packing, we were talking again about the hoolie-hoolies and he commented that he was going to be glad to have another adult with him on this trip. Those things really spooked him!

When Lightning was around, we made light of the hoolie-hoolie monsters but as you well know, joking about something often helps to waylay fear. So - as we had been waiting on supper, we had made a few jokes about the hoolie-hoolie monsters, wondering if they would visit our camp. We commented on the fact that we didn't have the protection of the nylon walls of the tent this time, that they could walk right into our sleeping bags and try to snuggle up. Meanwhile, I also had snakes on the brain, since it was a warm weekend and great weather for snakes to get out and stretch their coils - I just hoped they didn't want to cuddle too. Not sure if that ever occurred to the fellas, but it did to me, and my only comfort was the fact that all three of us snore when we camp, so I figured snakes, who are normally timid anyway, would be intimidated by the vibrations. In fact, I figured that would be our defense against almost anything that roamed in the night, hopefully even the hoolie-hoolies.

So there we sat, and the rustlings began. I flipped on my headlamp just in time to see a shadow dart out of view. Fearless Fox was closer to the woods, so he flipped his light on and he barely caught what appeared to be a small animal. Everything sounds big as it shuffles through leaves, but we knew for sure this was a small something. It came up on Lightning's side of the fire, so he turned on his headlamp and caught it - an armadillo. Lightning growled at it and it waddled off, seemingly apologetic for being intrusive. Soon we heard another rustling and we almost immediately saw a much bigger armadillo - MUCH bigger. This was most definitely a Texas armadillo, just based on his size. I growled at it and it faded off into the blackness, but it didn't seem to have the same regret for intruding on our camp. We heard him circle behind us and come up on the other side, so Lightning growled at him and again he faded. He hung around the outskirts for a little while though, as though trying to figure out how to get past our guard dogs. We finally decided he must smell our trail mix, so we retrieved it from a few feet away from us and put it between us.

I pulled out Ryan's Florida Trail Adventures and began to read them out loud (if you don't know what I'm talking about, go here): http://www.floridatrail2008.com/

I had known that Fearless Fox would enjoy hearing of Ryan's hiking stories, although he resisted reading them for a long time (that whole "letterboxers are freaks" phobia thing he has going on). I figured this trip was a good time to have story time and Ryan's current trip would be good fodder. Sure enough, we were all laughing steadily at Ryan's funny adventures and FF had a hard time believing Ryan could be a letterboxer. I read until I was hoarse, but they wouldn't let me stop. Lightning went to bed and still I read. He started snoring (hereafter thought of as hoolie-hoolie defense) and still I read. Finally, finally somewhere around 11 p.m. - after hoolie-hoolie hour if the timing of the previous campout were accurate - Fearless Fox and I decided to filter some water and bottle it and leave it in the stream to cool, hoist our remaining food up in a bear bag and finally turn in. I fell asleep while he was asking me something about the story. Who knows what I told him.

I woke up several times during the night and would immediately listen to see if I had been awakened by hoolie-hoolieing, was comforted by the sounds of snoring around me, and went immediately back to sleep. I'm sure Fearless Fox did the same. I'm also very sure Lightning never woke up once - and the evidence is in the fact that his face was covered in mosquito bites, which had attacked fiercely in the early morning. About 3 a.m. we both awakened to raindrops on our foreheads and we jumped up and secured what little was exposed and vulnerable to the rain. We shifted ourselves around to stay dry against the angle of the rain, and then went back to sleep and hoped for the best. The rain had quit by the time we finished situating ourselves and it never started again. The tarps had been a good gamble.

We finally awakened for the day around 8:30 a.m., glad to see we had not been hoolie-hoolied during the night. I proceeded to hop up, only to find that my body wasn't into hopping. I creaked my way upright, stretched and popped a few times and put away my bedding. I had not really thought about it the night before, but we had done a good job of taking out what we needed, using it, cleaning it and putting it away. What this meant was that there was very little necessary to do to break camp - yet another thing I love about backpacking! As I got ready to put a few things in my backpack, I realized my load had lightened considerably, probably most notably thanks to the potatoes being gone. I had also reduced the bulk by getting rid of two of the three boxes. My bag was light and roomy, and after moving around a bit, I felt up to the challenge of taking some weight off of one of them. FF had also been carrying food, so only snacks remained of that and he was a lot lighter too. I grabbed a few things and shoved them in my bag, this time packing my bag carefully to get things right. After eating a lazy breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate and reading a few episodes of Ryan's adventures, we were ready to go. I put a fresh pair of wool socks on, tied on my shoes being careful to get my shoelaces right, stood up, and hiked up my bag - it HAD to be at least 20 pounds now, if not a shade more! I didn't say anything though and stepped out with them somewhere around noon.

Now we were still going up the same hill we had been going up when we stopped the day before, and it had not gotten any easier! In fact, I was suprised that being fresher didn't make a difference in how it "felt" - the only thing I could figure was that the extra weight was making up for the tired part of the day before. I had almost decided I was going to have to give some weight back to them when we finally topped the hill and suddenly I felt in balance. I delayed saying anything to see if I could handle it, and I did.

Within 20 minutes, we hit the first road and crossed it. As we were approaching it, we saw a bucket hanging from a tree on the other side. I thought it must have been someone's food stash, although hikers usually hide their food a little off the trailhead and certainly not right on a road. As usual, I was bringing up the rear so FF and Lightning were on the bucket first. They opened it to see what it was and it was a geocache - and NOT any of the ones I had programmed in to my GPS. This was a mystery. The only thing I could figure out was that it might have been the last cache in a multi-cache that began about a mile away. The cache was soaking wet and I regretted that I didn't have a logbook to put into it to replace the soaked one. The trades all looked pretty gnarly, but there was a travel bug (hitchhiker to us) so I took it because I knew I could move it along pretty quickly.

We proceeded along the trail - nice flat trail for a change, but picturesque. Lightning was very tired and his wrist hurt and he was a little grumpy - as many of you know, NOT his normal temperament. We had debated quitting at the next road and letting Fearless Fox run ahead to get the truck while Lightning and I stayed with the gear, but I really didn't care to do that. Lightning suggested we drop our packs and hide them and all walk together to get the truck, which was a better idea.

I have to admit I wasn't feeling as chipper the second day as I was the first, but somewhere between the first road and the second, I became philosophical. What was standing between me and successfully completing this trail? Nothing but my attitude and will power! I realized I really WANTED to finish it, and there was nothing physically wrong with me but a little fatigue (I had not slept all that well while guarding my family from the hoolie-hoolies), a slight pain in the knee that is supposed to give me trouble (the one without an ACL, the one that has been scoped twice - it SHOULD complain!), and a bit of heat from a hamstring I pulled a few weeks ago. I've lived with the knee pain for 12+ years, the hamstring was best served by exercise, and the fatigue would make me sleep good. Yes, my feet were starting to hurt already, but after I adjusted my thinking, even they felt better. It was a journey. I could rise about the difficulty of it and enjoy the trip - the scenery was beautiful. It WAS a little warm, but it wasn't August after all! By that time I was inclined to vote to continue, packs and all, to the truck. And then Lightning sat down and refused to go any further...

Fearless Fox was stumped - Lightning had never done anything like that before. He knew that once you start, you have to finish. It was interesting watching the two of them because if Lightning had done it at home, Fearless Fox would've shifted into stern dad mode, shot a few sharp words toward Lightning and made him move, but this was different. FF finally realized the best thing to do was to sit down, have a little water, have another candy bar, and listen to Ryan's Adventures for a little while. After a nice relaxing rest and a good pep talk, Lightning knew it was time to move on.

We all hiked up our packs and headed off and almost immediately came to the second of the three roads! We didn't stop there to talk again about leaving the gear, hoping it would be forgotten. We came quickly to a small lake and decided to plant the last box there. It was lovely really and the perfect place for the third box. About 4.5 miles from the trailhead we had entered on. While we stopped to plant it, Lightning realized we had hoodwinked him and brought up the idea of stashing our backpacks so we could quick time it to the truck.

Realizing he had really stretched himself on this trip and he was still close to his breaking point, we backtracked a bit and hid their packs, opting to keep mine since it had snacks and water. Fearless Fox and I decided we would take turns carrying mine, so I went with it for the next half mile or so. He volunteered at that point so I dropped it so he could take it. When he hoisted it, he was stunned at how heavy I had packed it (he thinks it was closer to 25 lbs) and it threw him off balance a bit, and in the meantime he smacked Lightning in the mouth with the cup that was hanging from the back. This was about too much for Lightning, who broke into honest tears as he skinned back his lip to show a bloodied tooth and lip - OUCH! Resigned to ending the trip with a strained wrist, smashed fingers, a face full of mosquito bites that made him look like puberty had hit over the weekend, and finally a fat lip, Lightning trudged on looking dejected from behind. Poor guy - he is usually such a trooper and this just wasn't his trip.

We continued along, stopping often to rest. I offered to take the pack back periodically but FF kept it and I led the way. He calculated a mile or so to go, but I couldn't figure how he got that since I had a mental picture of how the roads lay. Still though, I figured I had a bad case of wishful thinking and went with his estimate. Finally, after examining hundreds of mushrooms and interesting tree growths and lots of cool stuff on and near the trail, I glanced up and thought I could see the truck in the far off distance. I dared not to say a word, but every time I glanced up, I knew it sure looked like our truck! I had been fooled a couple of times on the trail by downed trees that lay so they looked like roads ahead, so I kept going until I had no doubt what I saw. I pointed it out and we were all ecstatic to be at the end of the hike - success!

So in the end, what did we get out of it? I planted three new boxes, tried to find two caches unsuccessfully, found two caches without trying, fended off marauding hoolie-hoolies, knocked out a third of a breathtaking walk, and proved to myself and my fellas that I CAN backpack with them. Lightning will almost certainly have regained his sense of humor and will be able to tell the story with a smile (even if a lopsided smile!).

When the question comes up about memorable planting trips, this will have to rank up there for sure!- Barefoot Lucy"It's not about footwear, it's about philosophy"