Hiking the Day

I had just finished writing my blog post and closed my eyes last night when Pounce hollered "Helicopter, I just saw lightening!"  What?!  No!  I peeked outside my tent and sure enough a storm was coming in. We quickly packed up in the dark, left our food hanging in the tree, and hustled lower to some trees.  Dead trees, but better than out in the open.  We set up there and listened to the rain and wind and thunder, tried to sleep, and hoped a tree didn't fall on us.  Surprisingly I slept well.  Our tents were soaked in the morning so we slept in and waited for daylight to go back to our food and eat breakfast.  Our thoughts on the previous day and night was that we needed to be careful of getting too caught up in the thru hiker mentality so we can maintain situational awareness.  And also remind ourselves to hike the day not the miles and enjoy the trail.  It was a late start but a beautiful morning with beautiful trail.  

We met some southbound thru hikers that Pounce knew from the PCT and spent some time chatting with them.  At lunch we realized that an alternate route was a little shorter thus missing afternoon storms.  

So we had a fun off trail afternoon adventure and a hitch to Dubois to resupply.  We even made it before the PO closed and picked up our boxes.  New shoes!!  There are a lot of hikers here which is so strange after not seeing any of them for a month.  It's great to see them but also somewhat overwhelming.  We are being hosted by a retired couple and they are wonderful.  More about them tomorrow but right now a shower and sleep is in order.