It’s a Pond!! And you can SWIM!!!!!!!

Yes, it’s that effing exciting, After not bathing for the better part of a week, living in a pair of now well-beyond-grungy split shorts, which smell more than faintly of human, a water source you’re encouraged to enter, is like a gift from the gods.

So I made it to Speck Pond at roughly 3pm, plenty of time to make it to the next shelter, if I so chose, which would require me to pass my end destination by about a mile and a half, and then backtrack the following morning, but after talking to Eli the Caretaker, he told me that i would be fucking nuts to not stay and swim all day, and that the next days 6 miles could be finished in a matter of ~2-3 hours, plenty of time to make my ride.

I hesitantly decided to stay, and after about 40 minutes, decided it was the best decision I could have made, and here’s some photographic proof:

Speck Pond

Six-String (foreground) and Bean taking a swim (Bean washed his shirt in the pond… and you could see the oils coming off of it… groosssss)

And the sun setting on the pond

That night I slept in the shelter, figuring that setting up/tearing down my tent in the morning would add too much time to my day, and my deadline was fast approaching, and as I was getting settled, along comes Rock Monkey. Rock Monkey and I originally met at the Imp Shelter, and had run across each other a few times over the course of the week, but hadn’t exchanged much more than pleasantries, but since we were the only people in the shelter that night(camping platforms were booked), we got to talking, and realized that we both were classically trained musicians, which led to her singing a few arias as a sing-for-stay (Eli the caretaker is still the man!) Compound this with some night-swimming, and an anonymous idiot spreading his own poo all over the toilet seat in the privy, and you’ve got a pretty good final night!

Oh, and this for a view: