Sixth Post

Well, I'm back. What an unexpected adventure. An explanation is necessary.

On Saturday, April 3rd, Matt and I embarked on our adventure to Arkansas at about 7:30am. I drove for the first 3 hours, then Matt took over for the next. While I was driving, about an hour out of Tyler I was thinking of what I could have forgotten for our hike and realized that I had forgotten nothing! It was quite a good feeling. But then I realized that there was still a part of the trip that would not be spent hiking -- driving. It's good to have your driver's license on you when you're road tripping for 7 hours, let alone 12 hours. More on that later though. Basically I realized that I forgot my wallet. So I quickly pressed on the brake to stop the cruise control set at eighty-five and changed it to the sixty-five MPH speed limit. HA! Come now, I don't set my cruise control that far above the speed limit! Ridiculous. But we made it to Pelsor, AR un-pulled over and quite ready to start hiking, but we still had two hours to go. After about 45 minutes of waiting, Nick, Kyle and Drew showed up to take us to the beginning of the trail, two hours away. It was a long drive through windy roads, the first half of which we thought we were lost (but kept going in the hopes that we weren't), with few enough gas stations to excite (worry?)us when we got close to empty. Long story short, they got us to where we wanted to be.
We were both tired, so we decided to camp out that night and start hiking Easter morning. We tried fishing. We failed at fishing. "Neighbor" campers (people in an RV) were kind enough to give us food for dinner and breakfast. Let me know if you want details. So Sunday morning we start hiking. The first two miles suck, so a break was necessary and shorts were put on. We crossed a big river, which was exciting. Then at mile seven we stopped for lunch. Mile seven at lunchtime was making very good time. The last four miles were bad, to say the least. A lot of uphill huffing and puffing. At the end of our first day, we had gone eleven miles and found a cool campsite by a river, so we set up our tent and ran off to hang our bear bags. Bear bags suck. It took us at least an hour to put up two bear bags. TWO. Just to throw a rope over a tree branch and pull it up. SIXTY!! Minutes, I mean. Isn't that ridiculous? It was to us, especially when we were hungry and tired. I get whiny when I'm hungry and tired. Whiny and cranky. Just ask Matt. But, it's amazing how food and Palmer interact so intimately. After I ate my dinner I became myself again. Food became energy. Energy became happiness. Palmer was happy after eating food. Then we sat down and contemplated what we could possibly get rid of from our packs to make them lighter. Forty plus pounds on your back for eleven miles is not cool. I left about 10 of my Snickers behind. Some tuna packets, the two books I brought, a shirt, thermal and some crappy socks. We went to sleep right after sundown, and woke up sometime. A bit after sunrise probably. Ate oatmeal, got our dumb bear bags, and packed up the tent.

The second day we were pacing ourselves quite well, when after eight miles, speeding down a steep and rocky path, Matt sprained his ankle. It was probably my fault. I was in front setting the pace. Either way, we couldn't continue on. We prayed for it, asking God to heal it. Nothing happened. Prayed again because I didn't want to be "ye of little faith," and again, nothing happened. I figured God would surprise us the next morning. Well, He did. Nothing had happened. I can't explain why God didn't heal his ankle. It would have been really cool, and I would have said thank you like my parents taught me to, but He had different plans for us. We slowly hiked back one and a half(ish) miles to a campground we passed. This is where we stayed for three and a half days: http://www.whiterockmountain.com/
Upon arrival at the campground, we asked the lady in charge if campsites were free or not. She said it was ten dollars a night. We didn't have any cash though. But, I had been reading 2nd Thessalonian's the night before, where Paul talks about working so as not to be a burden.

"For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." 3:7-10

So I suggested that we offer her our work as payment instead of money. So we sheepishly walked up to her front door, rang the door bell and waited. When she came out, we explained our situation in full and asked if we could work for our campsite to which she replied, "I'm sure I can find something for you guys to do -- I have a lot of sticks in my yard that need to be picked up so that I can mow it." So Matt wobbled around her yard picking up sticks while I hiked back down the trail to get his backpack. When I got back, I helped him finish up stacking wood for her stove inside, and then we went back to our campsite. The next day we cleaned out a few of the campsites fire pits, then worked for five hours splitting logs with her hydraulic log splitter. She fed us pizza that night, and gave us Dr. Pepper. Her name is Paula, by the way. A very nice lady indeed. This was Wednesday night. Then on Thursday morning we were finishing up the rest of the logs when Matt re-sprained his ankle. So we were done for the day. Nick and Walker rescued us the next morning after getting themselves lost for a couple hours in the back roads of Arkansas. To their credit, those roads are pathetically lacking in signs. The ride back to Matt's car was fairly uneventful. We got there, jumped Matt's car because it wasn't turning over, then started the drive to College of the Ozarks in Branson. We were following Nick and Walker for about an hour when their car broke down. It wasn't anything we could fix on the fly, so they hopped in our car and we kept on driving. Upon arrival in Branson, we took the boys to work, showered, ate a dehydrated meal dinner, smoked a pipe, printed out directions to Ryan's house in Ohio -- wait a second. I didn't mention that, did I? Yep, we road tripped to Ohio. I guess it was Thursday night that we called Ryan and asked him if we could come up and stay with him for a few days. He and his parents said yes, so our decision was set in stone. We would drive twelve hours out of our way to see friends. Both Ryan, AND Lauren. If you know me from PNG, you know them; if not, they are part of my best friend clan. They are people that I will be good friends with until one of us dies. So twelve hours and seventy dollars in gas meant little to me. It actually sounded very exciting to drive through the night after being up for an entire day, still without a license. So, around ten at night we started our next journey to Ohio. I drove first again. This is actually relevant, despite its seeming unimportance. Matt stayed up with me while I was driving. Which meant when he was driving, he had been up for a very long time. Supposedly we almost died. I was sleeping, so I didn't really care. It would've been nice to die in my sleep. I guess Matt was falling asleep at the wheel when a cop pulled us over for tailgating. He almost gave me a citation for not wearing my seatbelt in the passenger's seat, but let us both off with a warning. Matt says he doesn't even remember tailgating, or even seeing the cop until he saw the lights in his rear view mirror. So the cop saved our lives? I'm sure God played a big part in that.
Anyways, we got to Sunbury, Ohio fine and reunited with Ryan. We went straight to Tim Horton's about twenty minutes before he got off work, and sat around in the parking lot waiting. While we were sitting there, some girl asked us who we were and said she knew us. Supposedly when we were in Sunbury seven months ago, we met her in the parking lot of Kroger's, and she remembered us? We were too tired to really care.
Basically, I could write for another hour detailing everything we did, but I'm not going to. We jammed, ate, smoked cigars by a lake, hung out with Lauren and hit up the Giant Eagle for free samples. Basically, it was a very good time. We chilled a lot. Then Matt and I drove the sixteen hours back to Tyler, TX. That's about it for now.
I didn't get to kill any bears. I didn't even see one. But I did use my Khukri knife! It chops wood extremely well. It's still dirty from chopping wood, actually. I need to clean it. Nevertheless, I'm happy that I saw Ryan and Lauren and experienced driving for more than 3 hours at a time before I leave for Australia.
That, by the way, is coming up next.