Last night, I slept ok. There were a bunch of people up late and lots of people were walking by so I was distracted. I also woke up in the middle of the night scratching my mosquitos bites like crazy. The venom from them finally kicked in and it was terrible. In the morning, I had to walk all the way down to the bathroom to use it but it's nice being able to flush. As I was walking out and ready to go, I tripped on a rock going downhill and flew four feet into the dirt gravel, face first. The gravity of my full 5 day resupply pack pushed me down and I wasn't able to catch myself. Since my skin has now become leather due to the sun exposure, only my knees got a little scuffed and my face/teeth were covered in dirt. I sat there on the ground helpless as my knees started bleeding. I guess I can finally say I've officially bit the dust. A game and undercover saw me on the ground and they came to help me up. They didn't actually see me fall but she said she saw a poof of dust and then me on the ground. We walked over to the bathroom to rinse off.

Horsies! Their fresh poop is smelly on trail!

On my way out of the campground, I noticed I was going the wrong way so once again, I had to back track. That happens way too often. The morning was nice, I didn't see any hikers till later. I saw a couple deer and a bunch of pack horses go by. Late morning brought out a ton of weekend backpackers and day hikers. This last section I've been kinda teaming up with a game and undercover. Yes, another married couple. A game aka Alissa is from Canada and undercover aka Chris is from the states. They have similar mileage days as me so we had leap frogged a ton after independence in the Sierra. But now it's just me and them. This section seems so dead, we barely saw any pct hikers today.

It's funny, I see all these married people fight and bicker on trail. They say they can't imagine doing the trail solo but I can't imagine doing it with another person. I mean, there's definitely pros and cons of each but I don't think I would thru hike solo again. If I ever did this again, I would want to do it with my future husband or something. I'm super glad I did it solo my first time though but it'd just be really interesting to do this with another person. It's nice being the one making all the decisions but you don't have anyone there when you have a hard day or there to motivate you.

I was walking through the valley by myself when I started hearing thunder from afar. I could see storm clouds up ahead. I started to panic thinking I was going to get caught in a storm by myself in bear country. So I start booking it and finally ran into the married folk at lunch. I was starving. Luckily, we didn't get stormed on. We did a couple of fords today, nothing super intense. But it's been awhile since our last ford so it was a like new again bc I forgot what it was like. We did two steep climbs before camp. The mosquitoes are getting worse each day. I think there will be just a black cloud of them some time tomorrow. Our campsite is a bit swarmed as well. It's hard to go outside to do anything. There are about six mosquitos I've killed inside my tent right now. Today was a surprisingly productive day at 17 miles, even for leaving so late.