Lake Delancy to Rodman Reservoir
After waking up, I walked around and took pictures of the sunrise over the lake and some pictures of the local birds.
As we were getting ready to pack up our gear inside the tent, these 2 ladies were walking on the path by us. One lady looked behind our tent then at me. She mentioned that there's a huge turkey behind my tent. Excited to snap a picture, I exited the tent. I looked behind it...
...and it was a Sandhill crane. I laughed and asked J.J. that if they thought that was a turkey, what the hell do they think they're eating on Thanksgiving? We shared a good laugh and preceded to pack up our gear. We added the Gatorade the other hiker gave us to the lake water and it really helped with the taste. We headed out.
My feet hurt. It was rubbing wrong so I taped the bottom of my feet with leukotape to prevent blisters. They were a little less sore but I figured that was normal. I was super thirsty because we only had so much water to drink for the day.
I took loads of stops to sip water and J.J. motivated me when I was getting tired. I wondered why I was not making so much progress with the same energy as the day before. Then it hit me. It's noon and we're in the full sun of Florida. I'm going through heat exhaustion. The fact that we had limited water didn't help. I wanted to drink it all. Another thing that kept me going was that I knew our next and last location will be like an oasis. We trekked on. J.J. was just fine. He's used to being outside all day in the Florida sun with his job right now and the rarely needed to drink water. Next time, I am am going to bring a water bladder. The more I hike in this weather, the more I'll get used to it and need less water.
We use google maps to see our progress and I got hopeful when the map jumps. We sadly didn't see any more deer other than the one that jumped in front of the Garys. No bears either. Never seen a black bear in the wild, yet.
Near the end of our trail section, I saw blue. WATER!
Lots of water. I freaked out, dropped my pack, grabbed my Sawyer Squeeze and headed toward the shore. I was saying to myself, " Please not salt water, please not salt water." I tried the water. It was freshwater and damn good tasting. I shared with J.J. and when he stopped drinking, I sat down for like 20 minutes, just drinking water. After about 15 more minutes walking along Rodman Reservoir, we reach the exit. We did it!
We walked to our vehicles and they both started. On our way home, I bought a 3 gallon jug of water and J.J. picked up a 6 pack. We had a good time and it was a great opportunity to test our gear.
