Day 81: (19.17 miles)
1052.5 – 1071.67

Today was the strangest day ever…to include a meltdown of sorts for me.  After putting in 20 miles yesterday, I was hoping for no 530 am alarm.

No such luck, but it did give us the opportunity to experience an awesome sunrise.  As we were up, so were enough mosquitoes to keep us (me) from lollygagging.  Initially the day started well and the trail was padded forest dirt morphing into gravel and later growing into rocks, then sand, then wet marshy, to gravel to rocks to dirt.

I think we experienced every type of terrain there was to include snow and slip shale.  There was no way to establish a rhythm for walking.  Today for some reason I also had balance issues, especially when I put my sunglasses on with progressive lenses.  I even slipped and landed flat on my keister, got a double soaker when both rocks I stepped on slipped out from underneath me as I attempted an “easy” rock hop across a creek crossing, and had just a generally bad hiking day as it pertains to general coordination which pretty much led to a bad attitude.  If it were not for Paul, I’m pretty sure I would have quit…if it was possible to do so without having to walk back to civilization.  Paul was a champ, putting up with (more like ignoring) my grumblings.  Even with the mishaps, the change in terrain was amazing. 

The beginning portion reminded us of Vasquez Rocks with the day ending in a Sonora Pass wind…trek, finally landing for the night at Lost Lake, which was quite appropriate.  What started with an awesome sunrise ended with an equally impressive sunset.  All is good.