ET's Info-Stew

09:55: I woke up today at 9:00. I must have been real tired because after going to bed at 11, thats 1o hours of sleep. I had oatmeal and hot chocolate this morning. Ten heaping spoons of oatmeal, 3 heaping spoons of hot chocolate seems right. I've seen at least 3 deer so far. One on the trail yesterday and two last night. It was too late to take a picture. At 22:30, Mr. Cleek said he had to leave to go to the bathroom. After 5 minutes, I began to hear a clicking noise behind me. Knowing almost for sure that Mr. Cleek was trying to scare me, I listened for noises he might make to give him away. After 5 minutes, I got bored and started to put some things away for the night. As I was doing so, Mr. Cleek came up behind the lean to and poked me lightly with a long stick. I jumped back and he started cracking up. I figured he would try something like that, but I was just looking in the wrong place. Last night was hot. I just drapped my sleeping long over mre. The chair works well as a sleeping pad, but I need a better pillow. I woke up a few times at night because of a sore neck.

18:03: We hiked 4 1/2 miles to a very excellent spot on Randall's Creek. The hike took about 2 hours and we just barely made it past a rocky area where the tide covered. I wore the water shoes on the way. They did pretty well, but didn't work so well when boulder hopping. Tying the pack up worked pretty much how I wanted. My hipbelt isn't working well because the weight doesn't transfer. When I put my pack on at the start of the day, I had it on one shoulder and the cloth under the right shoulder strap ripped about 1". I have to be careful when putting the pack on so that the damage doesn't get worse. There was a large rock with seals on it which I got a picture of. At camp, I got an outrageous picture that included the creek, sky, fog, a mountain and trees. I hope it turns out really well. Near camp I climbed partway, 100-200 feet, up Spanish Ridge. I got a couple of pictures up there. When I was high up there, I noticed Mr. Cleek lying on the stomach on the beach in the nude. Thankful that I was so high and couldn't see any details, I took a couple of pictures of the nice view of the landscape. As I started to go down, I saw a couple of young boys approaching Mr. Cleek, who didn't seem to notice. I was going to yell to warn Mr. Cleek, but I thought it would be much more funny to see what turned out. Just before Mr. Cleek noticed, I snapped a shot of the whole ordeal. Mr. Cleek looked, but dared not get up knowing he would bare more if he did. As the boys passed, he went back to camp and put on some clothes. As I was coming down, four more people came up and the party of six decided to make camp across the river. I asked him about it and one of the boys told Mr. Cleek "Don't worry about it" knowing it would be embarrasing no matter what. Mr. Cleek then replied "Okay, I wont get up for a minute." Despite the fog, I still ended up sun burned while I took my 1 1/2 hour nap after lunch. Time to start putting on sunblock.

20:04: I miss Jenny and Lassen so much right now. I wish they were here. It's getting very foggy. Mr. Cleek has hiked down to the beach and is making seal noises to see what our neighbors do. So far, he is pretty far away and hard to hear. Maybe he'll try to come closer. Tomorrow, I would like to explore the Randall Creek canyon. I think maybe we should camp here two nights and make it up to at least Big Creak (4 1/2 miles) on Tuesday. We have so much time, we have to plan to NOT go too far.