Allen, blisters, and rainy trail days

While Allen was out with his buddies at a conference in Atlanta I went on my first backpacking trip with a friend from church. We went out to Pt. Reyes and set up our tent at Glen Camp before hiking out to Alamere Falls. It's a lovely little fall that comes out right on the beach. Beautiful! Unfortunately we underestimated the mileage and ended up hiking back in the dark on lots of steep inclines. Not fun. Fortunately we had tortellini and a platy of wine waiting for us back at our tent. Don't know that the wine did my sore muscles any good, but it sure helped my way past the end of my endurance outlook on life. Well, the pesto helped a lot there too. We had talked about making a longer, ten mile loop, out of the park in the morning, but our sixteen mile day up and down hills had us pretty whacked. So we ended up packing up our gear in a very light misty rain and hiking out through the drizzle. I'd found two large blisters on my fourth toes that morning that even moleskin couldn't help very much. By the time we got back to the car I was wet, footsore, but still oddly glad to be out hiking through the woods. The rain actually made our typically dry California scenery look very lush and mysterious seen through the drifting bands of fog that shrouded coastlines and hills. Over all I had a very good trip. This whole weekend since Allen left has gone much better than I expected. Once again I've discovered that I'm a stronger person that I think I am, and that's very encouraging. Now Allen is back home (hurrah! hurray!), and everything is very good. I even found a Granite Gear pack I can take on my next backpacking trip. Usually I'd never even think about buying one of them because they're some of the most expensive packs out there, but good old REI was selling them for $150 off through their deal of the day program. If it works I'll have found more pack than I could ever dream of getting at a price I thought couldn't be done with a satisfaction guarantee that's the best in the business. That is a good week!