Swedish pancakes & iced coffee, not a bad way to start any day. The next possible place we can hike to from Scandinavia and camp is Hartman Creek State Park, a shorter day. The total miles say 14.5 miles, but our road walk back to the IAT recommended route is 3 miles and our hike into Hartman is .5, so more like a an 18 mile day in total. In any case, we took our sweet time this morning before hiking out of town. We visited Scandihus, a cultural crepe and pancake coffee house(that also serves ice cream) for breakfast. Scandihus is such a cool restaurant/store. They sell Scandinavian clothes and trinkets, too, but we can’t carry extra weight like that, no matter how much we might want to. Afterwards, we hit up the local bakery, Trout Bum Bakery, for second breakfast.
By the time we got our packs on and out the door, it was well past 0830. Leaving later meant a hotter sun on our faces for the morning road walk, we powered through it well enough.
Both yesterday and today, we encountered some on the trail that we had yet to really see, trail closures. IAT has closed some trails for high water and submerged bridges. I think this is curious. We have been asked to ford waist deep rivers and hike through deep bogs, are these closed trails really worse or more dangerous than those? We had to road walk around them, so I guess I’ll never know.
Today’s hike was smooth and unrushed until about lunch time. Brianna spotted a campground concession stand that would be open until 6pm. From that point on, I sorely wanted to make it there before it closed. We have all the food we need for the next couple of days, so it wasn’t that. We had also just had a wonderful 24 hours of beer and amazing food. There is just something about a cold pop that cranks my mental motor into overdrive.
We were about a 1.5 miles away from the concession stand with 40 minutes before 6pm when Brianna said, “I’m going to record a video, you can go as fast as you want to the store.” Boom, I was gone. Brianna has a saying for every time we go downhill and are physically and safely able to run it, “Thunder Cats are go!” Let me tell you, the last mile of this trail was downhill and boy was I yelling, “Thunder cats are go!” the entire time. No one was there to hear me, but I think it helped.
When I felt tired, I’d remind myself, “Mountain Dew will fix that.”
When my ankle and feet began to hurt, I’d think, “I’ll just put some ice cream on those when I get there.”
I did make it in time, too. Brianna was waiting for me at the campsite when I returned with some ice cream and pop for tonight, a couple of Gatorades for tomorrow’s longer day.
Today was a good day. Weather looks clear for tomorrow, looking forward to the mental storms all the miles will cause us :-/.
I’m in love with this story, and I feel like you guys are ice cream magnets! I wish I could run into amazing ice cream shops as I go through life.
Thunder Cats are Go!