Walks with Moss: Coming full circle on the high divide -day 4 Rest

Today was a day to rest and relax in the hot springs. We explored the old car campground and the hot spring pools, we rested, we soaked, and we ate two dinners. I put mole skin on my blister and gave it time to heal. I tried to relax but could not; PMS was rearing its ugly head.

Some sort of science project is happening in the old car campground, there were little red flags everywhere. I used flags like that when I studied moss.

At about 1pm a couple arrived at the springs, they had hiked in from Sol Duc spending one night at Appleton Crossing Camp. They told me about the man they saw who had hiked from Olympic Hot Springs to Appleton pass the day before. He said he had camped alone on Appleton pass. How strange that we never saw that man. We must have crossed paths when we were off trail thrashing in the brush.

I was worried about my hike out on what all of my maps call the "Upper Barnes Creek Primitive Trail". I knew we had to drop about 4,000 feet on that trail and was worried about dropping so much on a primitive trail.

The man in the party confirmed that the trail would be as bad as the Mildred Lakes trail and it was hard to follow in places. This had me worried for no reason; knowing what I know now, I'm pretty sure that man had either never seen the Mildred Lakes trail or we were talking about two different trails called Barnes Creek.

The pools are mostly filled in with yucky mucky cyano bacteria, they look gross but ironically they are probably more hygienic then ever with the road to the trailhead closed. I spent a good deal of time cleaning the muck out of the one pool that is below the trail since we were camped right above it. Scientists think that life on earth started in mucky warm pools like these.

My daughter was hungry all day, but we got to have two dinners since we had skipped dinner the night before. Our second dinner of the day gave me a migraine. I guess there was just a little bit too much "natural flavoring" in that soup.

I inventoried the food situation and it was not good. We were scheduled to spend two more nights in the Olympics, one at Boulder Lake and one near Lake Crescent. We had enough dinners left but we were down to just 12 tortillas, Coffee, sugar, some Nido and three bags of M&M's to eat for both lunch and breakfast for two people for two days. We had just enough peanut butter and Nutella to spread on the 12 remaining tortillas. This was not going to work.

I decided that we would have to skip Boulder Lake and head out the next day. If we skipped Boulder Lake we could eat all we wanted to for the rest of the trip, but if we stayed at Boulder Lake one of us would have to go without eating.

My daughter does not have an ounce of fat on her but I have plenty of fat reserves, so it would be me who would have to go hungry. But I was in the throes of PMS, my hungry time of the month. I was dreading hiking without food and did not think my mental state would be a safe one for hiking if I had to go 48 hours with very little food.

At seven I went to bed with a headache and an upset stomach from our second dinner. But at least my legs did not hurt after soaking in the pools and taking a day off of hiking. Every night of the trip my legs had cramped up and twitched and kept me awake due to my periodic limb movement disorder / restless leg syndrome. On this night my legs felt great.