Day one

Started the day at bobs at 4:15 am. Woke up with manda (from Portland), John(from nyc) , and moritz (from Germany). Ate a small breakfast and filled up water bottles, before loading out packs into the mini van and making the one hour drive to the trail head. 

Arrived at the monument around 6am and everyone was chilly and nervous. We signed the trail register and took some pictures with the group in front of the monument. There were two other hikers there as well getting ready to get started. One of them, Brianna, ended up joining our misfit family for the day as we all started making our way up the trail. 

The first mile was a cause for celebration, we stopped and took a photo with the sign and had some water. We pushed on and as the day went on our little group split up and rendezvoused multiple times. There were snack breaks, sit breaks, bathroom breaks and even a nap or two in the hottest part of the day. 

For the most part, the trail was very well marked and graded very gently. There were a few extended climbs (which eventually started to irritate my right hip flexor) but for the most part the trail was very pleasant, even in the heat. To be honest, it probably didn't get above 90° today and being from Florida makes heat easy to deal with. 

The worst climb was leaving Hauser creek. We pulled into Hauser creek around 330 and I immediately pulled out my sleeping pad to lay down for a nap. When we arrived there were already 4 people sitting around. We layer out our gear and made ourselves at home. Not long after, ryan - a 19 year old kid from Missouri carrying a 50 pound pack who we had run into multiple times - showed up. He was lamenting over the fact that he was down to half of a liter of water when we heard an engine pulling in. A man with no teeth rode a souped up moped down the hill with 4 liters of water and gifted 2 of them to ryan along with some weed. Talk about trail Magic. 

We sat around houser creek till 530. Most everyone decided to stay and camp there, but I was eager to keep going to at least mile 18 in order to finish the climb out of the creek bed. The creek was completely dry, and the first reliable water source is at mile 20, so I wanted to have an easy walk to it in the morning. 

Climbed up the hill and cooked dinner on a rock with Brianna before throwing my sleeping bag on the ground quite literally 18 inches to the side of the trail underneath a tree. No tent tonight, my first experience in cowboy camping.