Backpacking and the Rain

On Saturday morning, my boy scout troop left the church that we meet at and headed for Meramec State Park. I was pretty excited, since this is only the second time I've done any real backpacking. 

Once we got to the trail head, we arranged our gear once more and got out packs on our backs and moved on out. It was real slow going for the first two or three miles because we had a lot of new guys who were unaccustomed to the weight and feel of the backpacks. They didn't have the greatest packs to begin with, either. The packs that my scout master gave them were old external frame packs that didn't fit that well on either of the two guys that got them.  

We hiked a little more than five miles on Saturday, maybe about six or seven. I have some really cool pictures that I'll post. There were some other places that I really wanted to take pictures in, but it had started to rain, so I couldn't. One of those places was this really cool spring. It was a clear, misty blue color and those plants that always grow near springs in Missouri were all over. It was raining, so I only got a few pictures from under the rock. 

The rain stopped after a while, but the trail was still really wet and muddy. We made camp a little past the midway point on the trail and had a nice dinner of chicken and mashed potatos. I made a really warm, wide fire. I'm really surprised it was able to start at all, because everything around was some degree of wet. It did take around five or ten matches to get it going. Then I had to act like a bellows to get the fire really going. After that, the fire was almost hot enough to melt metal. 

Then it had to start raining. And it rained hard. I think that the sky only stopped pouring water on us for little bits of time through the night, and even them it was still precipitating. When I woke up in the morning, the ground outside the tent I was in was completely soaked. What was only a wet depression in the ground the night before was now a fast moving little stream of water. 

Speaking of that, most of the trail was filled with water too. The creek running next to the trail had risen from a small trickle to a big roaring stream. And whoever marked out the path for the trail didn't do it when there was a lot of water. Between our campsite and the parking lot where our cars were, the trail must have crossed the main stream about fifteen or twenty times. I'm almost not exaggerating. There were some places where the water was higher than my knees, so of course I got my feet soaked; and hiking boots don't like to drain. 

Not only did we have to walk through a lot of the creek, but we had to walk through flooded parts of the trail too. The trails there are so over used that if it rains a lot like it did this morning, all the water pools up in the rocky basin of the trail. 

It was a good camping trip all in all, but rain can ruin just about anything. 

--Was wet and cold. Now warm and dry!