Rest day today! I didn’t do any walking, but I did sit down for a live Hitherin Yawn video chat over Zoom. It was a good opportunity to review the week’s highlights (and lowlights) and answer questions from some of the folks who’ve been following along as I completed my first week on the road.
I plan to do a live video chat about once every month or so. Look for the next one as I approach Niagara Falls. Or feel free to ask questions over Twitter or Facebook. And here are the answers to a couple of questions that came in just after we’d signed off from this week’s chat:
Q: What’s it like camping in the rain?
A: Depends on the exact conditions: how much rain? how much wind? How cold is it, etc? But the rain that fell all day on Day 4 wasn’t much more than a drizzle most of the time, and there wasn’t any wind, so the rain fell straight down, which is easier to manage. Yes, I had to rig a tarp in the rain using the poncho I’d been wearing, and I got a little wet doing that, but I had a dry groundsheet and once the tarp was set, my sleeping bag stayed reasonably dry.Worst thing about the rain that day was that it brought out the slugs – but there were only a few this time. I’ve had mornings where I had to pull more than a hundred slugs off my gear before I could pack up and move on.
Q: Are you worried about bears?
A: Not really. Black bears in these parts aren’t particularly aggressive, though they might go after your food if you’ve got candy bars or something that smells good in your pack. ‘Course, it’s true that I was sleeping with my head on my pack, but I wasn’t camping in a campground or any area where the bears are used to human food being freely available for the taking. That said, best practice is to use a bear box or string your food bag from a high branch where the critters can’t get at it, and I always recommend following best practice …
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