8/10-8/12 part 1

This blog post will come in 3 parts because i'm afraid my butt will flatten out if i keep sitting on my chair typing for this long of a post. if you put all 3 back to back it is prettyyy long.

I embarked on a journey that many dream of, but few accomplish: backpacking. I, along with 7 other people (Clare, John, Victor, Timmy, Sam, Larry, Andy-Larry's cousin) would go on a 3 day trip and hike 30 miles across the Santa Cruz mountains and through Big Basin to a beach whose pronounciation is still unclear (WAD-dell? wad-DELL? WA-d-D-el-L?) I would be showerless for approximately 2 days, and the only shower that i would be able to have would be where capitalism reigned supreme (the shampoo cost $3.50 and it was a travel size bottle). I would not have internet service. Hence, as I am writing this, my muscles are spazzing out and my toe is crying out in pain (more on that later). SO, here are my distinct memories of the things that we did.

Day 1:

So, in a fit of wanting to be fashionably late, I ended up arriving last (not the definition of fashionably late) to Victor's house. oops! embarassing. anyways I brought along my pack and everyone was like WTF ASHLEY WHY IS YOUR PACK SO SMALL AND SO LIGHT yadda yadda. We left for Saratoga gap, where we would begin hiking. We all arrived at a parking lot and set off on our trip. We took our first break after hiking a quarter of a mile. After hiking for about 4 hours, we realized that we were running incredibly short on water. Well, I guess it wasn't THAT big of a deal cause the highway was like, right next to our trail. AND there were houses. So anyways we decided to send Sam, Larry, Timmy, and i think John? to find us some water by knocking on people's door. I think Larry paid 3 bucks for a gallon of tap water. oh dear. So now we start to carefully ration our water because Victor didn't know if our campsite had running water, and the creek that ran through the trail was on private property. All of a sudden, we reached the end of our trail (and the end of the park). it turned out that we were going the WRONG WAY and in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of our actual trail. we ended up walking along the highway (which was not highway 9 but something like 35) and knocked on this random house. This dude who looked like santa claus came out and basically said SURE use the hose for water and if you all can fit in my acura sedan i'll take you guys back to where you were supposed to start. haha i dont think i have ever felt that lucky. so with some hard thinking , we ended up fitting everyone in this TINY car and started over. we reached the actual camp (which had clean running tap) at like 7.

That night, half of the people were cold and the other half were hot. I was effin FREEZING. I remember i woke up multiple times to put on different articles of clothing (sweatshirt, hat, hood of the sweatshirt) and, in a fit of desperation, said to Victor (who actually, for the record, was like ashley are you awake first), "dude. i need you to put your legs on my feet. i am so cold." haha victor was so nice-he did. So nobody really got any sleep except maybe Andy, and we all just stared at the trees and wondered how some of the leaves bunched up to look like ninjas.