After finishing our Jewish tortillas, we continued on the trail. Camo got pretty far ahead of us as usual, but Just Clay and I stuck together, hobbling along on our bum knees. We met up with Camo an hour or so later at a clearing at the end of the segment. He was sitting on a dirt mound playing his guitar and having a snack. We sat with him and made a couple cups of coffee and had some snacks as well.
A little while later we saw the fighter pilot coming up the trail. We watched him walk to the creek with his huge pack and start filtering. From a ways away you could see his huge pump filter with hoses hanging as he was trying to fill his huge camel back, bladder bag and nalgenes. As he lumbered toward us, he reminded me of “Christian” from the book Pilgrims Progress. To be clear, we were never judging or making fun of this man. If anything, we were happy to see him out trying to reconnect with backpacking, through trial and error. We are by no means hiking experts, we had to learn about traveling light through trial and error just like everyone else. We gave him a few tips for the future, he thanked us, and he went over a few hundred feet and set up camp for the night.
We sat and discussed our plans for the rest of the day. On the map we saw that the next waypoint was only about another 6 miles away, so we decided to go for it. We werent feeling too hot, but we figured that we could push through.
Undercover Dirtbags 