I’m going to be backpacking and camping all next week, so I won’t be posting daily blogs again until the 27th.
For the first time in several weeks, I was cold enough in my bed to need my quilt. I’m not quite sure why that was, since it wasn’t particularly cold last night. Certainly not inside my house. Maybe going to bed later than usual was the culprit.
I’m going to take a shower – the last one I’ll get for at least 5 days – and then head out. It’s 4 to 5 hours to my trailhead, so I should get there in plenty of time to claim a site and setup what I want to setup. I’m thinking of just sleeping out under the stars rather than going the trouble of setting up my big tent. It’s not the setup of the tent that’s the issue so much as I don’t want to take it down in the morning. I’d rather just get started on my hike.
I’m going to try to have dinner in Featherville tonight, though if that falls through I will have food I can cook up at camp.
Four days of backpacking, then I’ll head to Big Creek, likely spending a night on the road rather than doing the drive all in one shot. It would be an 8 hour drive if I went through Boise, but if I take the back roads, I’m only adding an hour, so that’s what I’ll be doing. And that way I’ll get to go through Stanley, which is a beautiful area. I haven’t been through there since my first Idaho Centennial Trail hike that ended at Sawtooth Lake. There was a fire closure that prevented us from taking the direct route home so we had to go through Stanley instead.
It’s so strange to be doing all this by myself. Physically by myself. I can feel Ambrose’s presence. I feel like he’s showing up more strongly as the one year mark approaches. He knows that I need him now.