To read part three of day two, click here.

We left the creek with full water bottles, ready to go again. We were hiking along at a pretty steady pace, not taking a lot of breaks. We did have to stop every once in a while, because Bobby would see a blackberry bush. And then he would stop walking and eat all the blackberries he could pick before someone would tell him to start moving again. 😀

Bobby eating blackberries.

I was never one of the ones who told him to get moving again – I was always glad for the breaks. I think my pack weighed about 40-50 pounds that day, which is almost or over half of my body weight! (I don’t weigh that much. :D) So the hiking was really exhausting me.

It probably did not help that my pack was not adjusted right! We were taking a break right before a big turn to the left, and I asked Jen to look at my pack. She pulled a couple straps, had me pull a few, and it felt A LOT better! The weight was sitting more on my hips, instead of my shoulders, the brain (top of the backpack) was not hurting my neck, and those two changes made a huge difference.

We started walking again. It got a bit easier for a little bit, and then got hard. I was having trouble keeping up, and there was a pretty big gap between me and Bobby.

What my view was supposed to be…

So I got put up in the front of the line, which was a lot of pressure. I felt like I had to go faster so I would not disappoint anyone, and I was just burning myself out. Katie (who was right behind me) told me to slow down, that it was ok to go a bit slower. I slowed down a bit and it was easier, but it was still really hard. I was able to keep going though!

We finally made it to the campsite! I was so happy – we had done it! We had completed our first hike with only a few small injuries. Mainly, blisters and bug bites. 🙂 There were times during that hike (during the last bit) where I had thought I was not going to make it to the camp site, that I was going to need to take a break. But I was always able to keep going, and because of that we made it to camp and were able to eat dinner in the light! Eating and putting up tarps in the light was always a huge blessing…

We all got out our group gear and put it in the room of our “house” known as the “Gear-age”. AKA a certain area by a tree. 😀 The cooks grabbed the food, pots, fuel and the kitchen bag and went over to where we were cooking that night. I pulled the tarp out of my backpack and the girls and I walked over to the platform that we were going to be sleeping on that night. Yep, we got platforms that night! Some of the people did not like the platforms – I did not care. It was a place to sleep.

Since Jen was helping the cooks, Katie showed us how to do the tarp knots. There was only one knot, but it was not a very easy one, in my opinion. I don’t know it’s proper name – we just called it the Four Knot.

We set up our tarp the best we could. The platforms made it difficult, since our tarps are rectangular and the platforms are square. And I did a horrible job with the knots – Sarah Margaret had to come and re-do my knots, since I could not figure out how to do it correctly. But we did our best, and we did not get wet that night!

The girls tarp the first night we set it up.

Now that I think about it, we probably did not get wet because it did not rain that night, not because we did a great job with the tarp. 😀

Ok, just kidding. We did a great job with the tarp, it was just that the platforms made it almost impossible to have a pretty tarp. 🙂

Click here to read the next part of Day Two.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here.*