Mapping the Sheltowee

[I.B.Me]

Day 11 Tuesday 7/10/07
At 5:53am I arose to the birds singing and was glad to see the rain was holding off for now. I hit the trail at 7:19am and made my way to hwy 27 and thus my food and water stash. The trails in this area are in much better shape because the horse people frequent them. I was glad to find my stash unmolested. I was a little worried that a raccoon may raid my food before I could retrieve it. When I stash food I do it in one of two ways. This time I hung the food in a bear bag about 15 feet off the ground and three feet below the hanging limb. In the past I have buried five-gallon metal buckets with tight sealing lids in the leaves. I always GPS mark the food stashes just for a double safety when trying to find them. I enjoyed a long breakfast stop right beside the hwy 27 trailhead. Incidentally this trailhead is where my catalytic converter was stolen in May. The rain set in about 2:00pm and started just as I was passing an old abandoned restroom near the Yahoo Falls turnoff so I held up there for an hour or so and when the rain slacked off I left the shelter. During another heavier rain I held up in a rock house and even made a lounge chair from the flat rocks inside. I eventually gave up on outlasting the rain and just kept moving. At trail mile 240 there is the Alum Ford trail shelter that we stayed in this spring when hiking with BSA Troop 71. Just before Yamacraw I met up with a lady that said she and her family had been camped on the river for eight weeks. They had two large 20x40 tarps pitched and have individual tents pitched under one tarp and the other tarp is used for the kitchen area. They just fish and live out of the river and the ones that have jobs work during the day. No rent, no utilities, no problem.
Knowing that if I were going to encounter a bear, it would probably be south of Yamacraw, I was a little more on edge during this section. It was no comfort when I came across bear tracks in the mud at 248 trail miles or a pine tree with claw marks as high as seven feet at 250 trail miles. I passed the bear’s territory tree just as it was getting dark so I pressed on another mile before making camp in the more open area of hardwood forest. I purposely hung my food a little further from camp and more securely than other nights. It had been raining steady all afternoon so I was glad to get under the rain fly for supper and for eventually bedding down in the dry hammock. Data for day eleven: 24.3 trail miles hiked, 0.0 extra miles hiked, moving time 8:18, stopped time 5:36, average moving speed 2.9 mph, total average speed 1.8 mph.