We camped with Morning Wood, who offers assistance to hikers from his van, and who cooked cheeseburgers to lift our spirits.
Then it was right back to the swamp and the underwater Florida Trail to hike in rain for most of the day. You hope to setup your tent during a break in the rain, but it doesn’t always work.
Parker Hammock Camp was flooded, so we had to backtrack to find dry ground. But even that didn’t help. My ground sheet that came with the tent isn’t sized right. It’s a discount Amazon freestanding tent and I should have ditched the ground sheet the first day I noticed how heavy it was, never mind the excessive size.
It was the idea of being able to setup my rainfly without the bug net and bathtub that was intriguing, a possible way to setup the tent in heavy downpours that would keep me mostly dry, but that was also something I haven’t yet tried. There isn’t a lot of energy left when you’re putting in miles all day long, and setting up in the rain isn’t an ideal time to experiment.
The wind drove the rain against the side of my tent, which rolled down and got caught by the ground sheet to form a puddle underneath where I laid. By morning it was knuckle deep.
I was also almost out of food.
I’d forgotten to check the hiker box at River Ranch for food discarded by other hikers. Unlike other trails, I have been gaining weight on this hike, so running out of food was a semi-conscious choice as my lack of self control around food is sabotaging my goal of six pack abs.
I was hungry, everything was wet, there was a cold front moving in, but I was having a great time.
#floridatrail #ftthruhike #embracethesuck