Paddling back to shore

Before I blogged about the day's hike I wanted to include a link to why I chose the Colon Cancer Alliance to partner with for the hike.  This Link goes into detail. Why CCA?

The Colon Cancer Alliance has been a support group that my family has used to find out information and speak to other patients with colorectal cancer. We have appreciated the work that they do. If you know anyone with colon cancer, I recommend you make sure they know about this organization.   

I am almost halfway through the hike and almost halfway through with the fundraising - thanks to you!.  If you haven't had the chance to participate, please click on my fundraising page to donate to the Colon Cancer Alliance gofund.me/PCTWithPurpose.   Almost halfway!  

The day before the journey started with my Dad, a Stage 4 Colon Cancer patient. 

As I have traveled north toward the Canadian border, the group of those traveling with me has grown. We are all starting to get our trail names as well.  Liam was recently donned Bass Boat due to his fantasy to quit the trail and join his parents on Norris Lake and go fishing on his bass boat all day.  

This area will make you dream of lazy days fishing. Water, streams and beautiful landscape surround you. When you are reading the guide book or looking at videos about the trail, it doesn't prepare you for the beauty that you will encounter.  

Our group separated as we went toward the Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR). I had a package that I needed to pick up, so I rushed down to the VVR shuttle to make the 930am. With a combination of running, speed walking and a very much tangential path along the trail we were able to cover 10 miles in under 2.5 hours. All of our rushing was to no avail however, the VVR shuttle ended up being two fishing boats that could only hold 4 and 5 passengers respectively and took 35 minutes one way to make it across the lake. After waiting until 2pm for the next shuttle to run, we were all packed up and on our way when the boat ran out of gas and left us marooned out in open water and forced us to paddle back to shore and wait for another shuttle to get into VVR. I wish I had a picture of us paddling our way back toward the shore to share with you. 

Another hiker in our group, Nightrider,had decided to take a different path into town. She ended up being the smart one in the group. Not only did Nightrider sleep in until 10am that morning, she beat us to town by a couple hours. The rest of the day went smoothly and we had to laugh about the troubles we had.

Here is a link to one of the swinging bridges we crossed earlier in the trip.  I was just able to upload it and thought you might like to see what it was like. swinging bridge