Day 12: The Mud Is Alive!

September 5, 2024: It rained during the night, and the rain continued through the morning. The weather forecast showed it would continue until about 10:00am. *sigh*

Even worse, I suffered from another slug infestation during the night. Dozens of slugs had slithered up my tent leaving slime trails everywhere like they had been burning doughnuts or otherwise just street racing across my tent.

I made sure I had camped before this sign on the trail. Seemed like a bad idea to try setting up camp in the woods after passing this sign! So, that left me a tiny space to camp between the sewage treatment plant and the military training area. =)

 

Looking ahead on the trail, I identified a place where I might be able to make a good wild camp, but it was a little over 20 miles away so I didn't have all morning to wait around for the rain to finish. Somewhat reluctantly, I packed up camp, flicking off all the slugs from the tent while in a light sprinkle. It was not my finest moment, but I was hiking by 8:00am.

The rain, I suppose, one might say had "technically" stopped at some point, but for all practical purposes, it never did. A fat, misty fog hung in the air, and a stiff wind often blew it horizontally across the farm fields. The whole day was wet, from sunrise to sunset. Stupid weather forecasters. Today would have been a great day for a zero (or at least a nero) had I known that in hindsight, but I kept hoping the weather would improve. The forecasts kept insisting it would, and I kicked myself for even looking at them. I should have known better by now.

Hahaha! Yeah, the risk of fire today was definitely ZERO. Not even low, but ZERO. You wouldn't have been able to start a fire even if you tried because it was so wet today.

On the plus side, I was out of the mountains and the trail largely followed rolling hills through farmlands--very easy hiking, but extraordinary muddy due to the rain and, as John from "Seattle" would say, the mud was alive! Often times, thick layers of it clung to my shoes like bricks and I had to stop to scrape off the mud.

The mud was alive!!!!

In the town of Danby Wiske, there was a church with a tuck shop, and I detoured off trail to it mostly as a place to get out of the rain. I really didn't need anything from the tuck shop, but I needed a rest and I wanted to rest somewhere out of the rain.

One section of trail was overgrown with blackberry bushes thick with thorns, and I crouched as low as I could walking through trying to avoid the thorns, but many of them still managed to scratch me. I also found a sock hanging from one, clearly yanked off the pack from a hiker ahead of me. I had a pair of socks hanging off my pack as well, and seeing that, I stopped to check to make sure neither of them had been snagged by a blackberry bush as well. I made it through without the loss of any socks, but I did grab the one that someone had lost. Maybe I'll catch up with them on the trail and can return it. It was a Darn Tough sock so I knew it wasn't the cheapest of socks and it was a good sock. I know I'd be heartbroken if I lost one of my Darn Toughs! 

Lots of rolling hills through farms today

 

As the day wore on, the pervasive wetness pulled my spirits down. It was an utterly miserable day of hiking from start to finish and with no end in sight to the wetness, I decided to stop earlier than planned. The first good place I found to stealth camp, I would stop.

There was a small group of relatively young trees between a couple of farms that wound up having enough space for a tent and turned out to be splendidly well-hidden while still managing to allow a surprisingly large amount of light in despite the darkness of the day. Looking at my maps, I would have never have guessed such a great place for a wild camp would have been located here, but I quickly set up the tent, trying to do it in record time so water didn't get inside the tent before I could get the rainfly up.

And, at about 5:00 in the afternoon, I was officially done for the day. Despite stopping so early, I had managed to knock out 19.9 miles according to my GPS, which was surprisingly good considering how bad the weather was. On the other had, maybe I did so well because the weather was so bad. When it's bad like that, I don't want to stop or linger in the cold, wet rain.

Any in any case, I was glad to finally be out of the rain, and quickly changed into my dry camp clothes and felt a semblance of humanity return. So glad to be out of that miserable weather....

I was absolutely exhausted and found myself falling asleep by around 8:00pm that evening.

And thus ended another day on the trail......

This church is in an award-winning town....

It won the Best Kept Village award in 1981! Good job, citizens!

This treehouse looks to me like it used to be a building on the ground, then this tree grew up underneath it, picking it up and plowing through the middle of it!

Cornfields!

Welcome to Danby Wiske!

I came into this tuck shop largely just to get out of the wetness of the day and take a break.

Creepy! I was later told by others that there's audio that goes with it, but no audio played for me. Not sure what the audio was about. Yelling and screaming to stay out? Cursing anyone who may pass? No idea!

The wife is probably protecting this honesty frig! =)