Day 14. Mud

Mile 235 – Stealth To Mile 257 – Stealth

I wasn’t sure what to write for today, so my dad told me to write about mud since that’s what we walked in all day. Here you go.

Hiking in Ver(mud)mont consisted mostly of trudging through knee deep mud and puddles with no way around. Connecticut was puddles on pine needles, so no mud. It doesn’t rain in Texas.

This mud was mostly dry ground, since it had only rained lightly for about 7 hours, but it was covered in a layer of thick, pudding-like goop. We weren’t sinking in at all, which at first seemed like a good sign. We soon realized it was because the mud was coming with us. Each step our shoes got heavier and heavier, taller and taller. We had to stop to scrape our shoes every few steps because they were gaining more mud than was falling off. We tried walking in the grass, which helped with mud, but made walking even slower. Each step took more energy than three on a normal day and each mile felt like it took twice as long.

The best part of the day was a herd of free range cows, maybe about 20, that were so scared they took off running and mooing in front of us on the trail when they saw us.

At least it didn’t rain!