It happened to be Independence Day, and at around noon, I looked up to see a bird circling overhead in a thermal. A Bald Eagle! It was the only one we saw on our trip. The boys broke in to the National Anthem.
I liked it that we didn’t have any established campsites. You just looked for a nice place to stop, and there was almost always a ring of stones already there that you could use for a fire. This was our second evening. We saw several deer in this part of the valley.
The next day we had a significant distance to cover. We wanted to leave our camp set up and put only the essentials in our pack because we planned to continue hiking deeper in the wilderness to a feature called the Chinese Wall. We would come back, break down camp and load back up again with everything, and then hike another 6 miles or so back to the base of a mountain we planned to hike the next day. This section of the trail had a lot of stream crossings that were deep enough to go over my water proof boots and fill them with water. So many crossings that there wasn’t time to be taking my boots off for each one. My feet were soaking wet all day.
Then we hit snow on the trail. The snow wasn’t so bad in the morning. Firm enough to walk on, but in the afternoon, it had warmed up enough that the snow softened, and we broke through with each step and post holed a lot, slowing us down. This is the Chinese Wall. It’s about 1,000 feet tall and 10 miles long. A spectacular feature.
