After busting through the crust of frost encasing the tent, reorganizing all our gear in the parking lot, stashing Latoya at the garage once again, and having the most terrible gas station breakfast experience ever, we loaded into Justin’s car for the trip north to Hobart.
After some meandering up and down a handful of back roads, we located a suitable put-in on a small stream dumping into the upper West Branch. I think Justin was expecting to drop us off and watch us paddle triumphantly down an open river, but instead he was treated to an awkward slog down shin-deep streambed while we lined the canoe between us. The bulk of the day was an equal distribution of walking, paddling, scouting and portaging through terrain dotted with downed trees, weird dead animal parts, and trash from multiple decades recently unearthed by the flooding.
While stopped for lunch, Steve located a bloated white tick on the back of his knee and proceeded to have a very calm meltdown. It was the first time one had broken skin on either of us, and we weren’t happy about it, but there was definitely no profanity, agonized dancing with flailing of arms, making me turn around so he could strip naked and check everywhere for more, or neurotic swatting at the “crawlies”. None whatsoever.
We camped for the night behind a flood berm at the edge of an elementary school soccer field. Having decided not to fuck around any longer with the potential for rain, we set up the tent under our giant tarp. There absolutely was not a half hour span where each of us stripped naked in the tent, frantically scanned every inch of our skin with my first aid kit’s mirror looking for ticks, and had a panic attack at every speck of dirt or small mole. No way. After that span of time that definitely didn’t occur, we had a leisurely evening tea under our covered “porch”.
Too bad the tea was flavored with Taco Bell fire sauce since Steve had failed to rinse the pot.