July 28th, 2018
Like every day lately, today we swam and napped by a lake for several hours around lunchtime. Renee calls this the “lake crawl” section of the trail (the previous few hundred miles was the “beer crawl” section). This section has been through mountains that are much more remote than the rolling hills we were in previously, so there are more lakes and fewer towns. The smoke from the nearby forest fires became the thickest today that it has been so far. It was almost like fog. We will probably have smoke for the next few weeks, but the fires are far away so we’re not in any danger. Our campsite was quite crowded tonight. We are allowed to camp virtually anywhere along the trail, but due to slopes or vegetation, lots of the ground is not very campable. Many previously “established” campsites are shown on the map (actually an app we all use called Guthook). Hikers often aim for a specific established campsite rather than risk not finding somewhere to camp when they get tired. But, sometimes too many hikers aim for the same campsite, especially near towns when most people start the day from the same point. That is what happened to us today–there were 10 people and 8 tents squeezed into a site that would comfortably hold 2-3 tents. But, we were all friendly and happy to share stories of the trail.
Many lakes for swimming 
smokey 
