Day 83: 1000 miles!!! :D

Tuesday 7/10/12
Miles 986-1007 (21 miles)
Elevation 9,244

Today must have been a reward for the last two days of hell. Lol. We basically had one long gradual up, and a long gradual down. I felt as if the hallelujah chorus was playing all day today! Lol :)

It was really nice today. Plus it was the first time in a while we've seen snow on the mountaintops. I kind of miss hiking at elevation (10,000'+). I *dont* miss the cold, but at least there's a lot less bugs higher up. Lol!

Oh, and in other exciting news, I hit the 1,000 mile mark at 3pm today!! WHOOOOO HOO!! A bunch of us took a break there. It was like a mini dance party. Minus the dancing, because we were too tired. Lol! I've been around some cool people today. Renski, who is a student at UC Berkley from the Netherlands, she is section hiking from Tuolumne Meadows to Donner Pass. Bummer I didn't get a pic of her. But oh man she was eaten alive by mosquitos yesterday. She had so many welts on her I felt bad. Kyle gave her some deet, it helped. She had the natural kine insect repellent. Sorry to say, that stuff doesn't work out here. In fact nothing does, except 100% deet. :(

I also leapfrogged with Gut Feeling all day. She's funny, one or two nights ago, she was saying how we should take all the hikers named Caveman and divide them by era, so there would be a Caveman, Homo Erectus Man, and Cro Magnon man. Haha. Genius. :D

There is also a cool Canadian couple Mr.C (c for Canada), and snow white, I got a pic of them when we camped. A bunch of us camped together. There was also Green Machine, he's the guy in the screaming green shirt in one of the pics. Poor guy, he showed up at the camp area hours before any of us got there, but left his solar charger 3.5 miles back, so he had to run back and get it. UGH.

I'm stoked we got in 21 miles! I'm tired, but it's a good kind of tired. Not like yesterday's I-wanna-die tired. Lol.

Scenery is different, we left Yosemite today. The mountains and rocks aren't as white. Interesting how that was so sudden.

Anyhow, I'm stoked! The bug-level is ick, but manageable enough that I don't need the bugnet on my tent yay! :)