Chattooga River - part 2

It didn't take long for us to scout out a great site next to the river and start setting up camp at Burrell's Ford.  Rake and I got to work on our small tents and Aaron built his camping hammock.  My tent is a one man tent and is small.  I can mostly sit up in it at one end, or lay down, and that's it.  I didn't realize the size until I was sleeping with my backpack inside by my legs.  Next time the pack stays out.

After building camp we went down and waded in the water a bit.  There was a large tree that had fallen across the river, forming a natural bridge that I stood on for a while.  Aaron joined me on the log and started to cut away my hand holds away for fire wood.

Back at camp I found some food and organized my things a bit.  Aaron was away from camp for a little while and when he came back, I noticed his hair was all wet.  He said he felt much better after cleaning up in the river a bit.  I decided that sounded like a great idea and headed down to the river (in my jeans).

I splashed water on my arms, face, and neck.  The water was cold and very refreshing.  I bent down and rubbed the water through my hair before standing up and looking down river.  There was no one else out there at the time.  Just me and the sound of the water rushing over the rocks.   What an awesome feeling to be standing in that river among the beauty that God has created!

That night I ate some crackers for dinner.  Rake was digging into a packaged Tuna meal,

and Aaron thought he would do some cooking.  His cooking turned into my entertainment as I finished my dinner.  Without all the details, I'll just tell you I don't remember what he ate.  Whatever it was, I'm not convinced it was cooked properly.

Of course we had a camp fire that night.  Can you camp without one?  The fire was going good and we all sat staring into it until the ultra late hour of 8:30pm.   That was when we called it quits and got to bed.

It was warm, and I started out on top of my sleeping bag.  By morning, I was in the bag, zipped up and cozy!
It was about 7:30am when I crawled out of my tent to find my partners still asleep.  I headed out to the river with my MP3 player and watched the water for a bit.  My shoulders and neck didn't hurt as bad as they did Saturday night.  In fact, they didn't seem to hurt at all and I was surprised I wasn't in pain.

At night, I had put my food with Aaron's on the other side of camp, hanging in a bag.   Rake decided to keep his food in his tent.  He said he would risk the bear foraging in the night and be the one to get attacked.  I tried to appreciate his sacrifice, but his tent was just too close to mine.  Either way, the bag of food was untouched and so was my tent.

We had just a few miles to hike on Sunday, so we took our time closing up camp and getting our packs back on.  The first stop Sunday morning was King's Creek Falls.

That was the last landmark of our trip.  We posed for photos and talked about what we had seen on Saturday before hitting the trail back to the car.  It had been a very good backpacking trip.  Hard work for sure, but very rewarding.

This backpacking adventure was about three guys heading into the wilderness, carrying everything they needed on their backs.  Sometimes we walked silently on the trail, just listening to Rake's sleeping bag smacking his butt.  Other times we joked and laughed together.  When we would stop for a break, we'd marvel at the amount of water that Aaron squeezed from his head band.  Or at the fact that I was hiking more than ten miles on a hot day in a pair of jeans.  This trip pushed us to try harder when we thought we couldn't.  I guess that's why it was suggested our next trip be during the winter so we could add freezing cold to our list of challenges.

A big thanks for an awesome first experience with backpacking goes to Aaron, Rake, and of course, the Chattooga River!