Date: 2016-03-11
From: Tri Corner Shelter

To: N of Spanish Oak Gap
Miles today: 21.5

Last night we stayed at the Tri Corner Shelter. There were ten or eleven of us. All boys except for me. I counted at least 5 different pitches of people snoring at any given time. Needless to say it wasn't one of my soundest nights for sleeping.   This morning as we were all gathering our equipment to go and eating our breakfast, I asked the boys jokingly if they'd ever heard of the ' House of Horrors'? They said yeah. I said, we'll I'm naming the Tri Corner Shelter the 'House of Snorers!' You guys snore like Banshees! They laughed. As we were hiking down the trail I had an idea. In 2006 before we hiked the PCT I read a book by John Steinbeck. It's called 'Travels with Charlie. This is a great book. John decides to travel across America with a pickup truck and a camper and put his finger on the pulse of people as he goes and see what they are feeling and believing.   He takes his dog, Charlie. There are many things he says in this book that can apply to a long distance hike. One of my favorites is 'we find that after years of struggle, you don't take a trip, the trip takes you.' I have found that to be very true. No matter how many hours you may spend planning your hike, something unexpected seems to pop up and change everything.   The second quote I like is ,'I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation--a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here... nearly every American hungers to move.' I think I could say this is true of most through hikers I have met. So anyway, this gave me an idea! I could write a book and call it ' Travels with Will '! It would be all about my various backpacking adventures with Will through the years. And we have had quite a few. We've seen some amazing views throughout America and Canada, had various close calls and near misses on the trail. Seen a pretty vast array of wild animals from grizzly bears to black wolves. And every time we have ventured out we have returned changed in some tangible way. I think I totally have enough material for a book. But I'm just kidding with you, I'm not planning on writing a book. The 4 or 5 of us that would want to read it wouldn't be enough for the printing cost. Lol. I think I just liked the spin off sound of the title, ' Travels with Will '.All book ideas aside, we had about 18 miles to make it to Standing Bear Farms where we had sent a small resupply box. I must say, that I think Will has done a really fine job keeping our resupply spots short so that we only need to carry a couple of days of food at a time. This keeps our pack weight down. My back thanks him as I hike up all this uphill. If our hike going into Top of the Mountain Georgia was a 'Road Runner kind ofor day' I'm not sure what I would call today. Huge amounts of gradient downhill that had my feet pretty much flying. We had one small glitch with our AWOL directions when it came to making the turn off to Standing Bear. But we just called them and got it clarified. We reached the Farm in the early afternoon. Picked up our package, bought a little supplemental food from their really great on site store, chatted with some hiker friends for a bit and then moved on. We still had another 4 miles to make our daily average goal that we set for ourselves. Standing Bear is a work in progress. They are in the process of upgrading and improving the farm complex. But even as it stands now, this was a great little stop. It's right on trail and it allowed to keep our food weight down by holding a package. It gets the Team Tyler seal of approval. Well, we've found a great little camp site and we are ready to hunker down for the night. Catch you later! Road Runner