The miles came pretty easy today. The elevation profile was relatively flat and other than navigating some blow-downs the trail was in great shape. Not too many views today as the trail is mostly buried in the trees.

This is a fairly typical section of trail today.

I took a short break at this cabin open to hikers located just off the trail.

There was ~5 miles of trail that would pop in and out of these lava fields. Thankfully, they did a great job building the trail which made the walking way easier than it would have been had I needed to pick my way through.

More lava trail with Mt McCloughlan on the horizon.

I had 18 miles done by 12:30 and decided to hitch a ride two miles to Fish Lake Resort for some food and drink. My lunch companion was the resident chipmunk. Pretty sure he’s going to have some cholesterol issues with all the food he was stealing (curly fry in picture). By the time I hitches a ride back and was ready to hike it was 2hrs later.

This is a random rest stop in the late afternoon. A flat rock (or log) is all that I need 🙂

One of the few views today…Fourmile lake.

Home for the night was next to Christi Spring.

The mosquito situation ramped up exponentially today. The last couple hours I was swatting and walking. I finally succumbed and put on the DEET. Luckily, my campsite wasn’t terrible…merely annoying.

I listened to a lot of podcasts today since the hiking was uninspiring (plus it’s a good way to distract from the mosquitos). Seemed like a good time to cue up Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. If you are not familiar he does an amazing job describing specific periods of time in vivid detail from the Protestant Reformation to today’s episode called Destroyer of Worlds on the rise of the Nuclear Age. He researches the topics from many different sources (Russian texts to Truman’s Biographies) The best part is that the podcasts are 5-6 hours long, so it’s a great way to pass a good chunk of the day. I will attach a link below if you want to check it out :
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/id173001861?mt=2&i=1000380386551