Today is the fifth anniversary of Will and Sofia's first date. We got a cell phone signal, so we took a break and he got to call his girly friend!
We hiked along bits of an exposed ridge line and crossed big rock slabs. I tripped and fell, but I caught myself in a squishy spot. The worst of my injuries were some tiny splinters that I discovered a few days later and had Will dig out! Our water filter kept getting clogged and it held us up for a bit. We still had 10 miles to go at 4pm and had a brutal hike left. There was a bench along the trail that tempted us, but we worried that if we sat down we might not get back up. We did end up stopping at the Audie Murphy monument. He was the most decorated soldier in WW2.
It seems like they overlooked the maintenance of the overlook.
We got to do our first night hike, not arriving at the shelter until after 9pm. We hiked a mile and a half in the dark. That might not seem like a lot, but that is 45 minutes of hiking in the pitch black! Our hike was rewarded by seeing our friends Poptart and Salamander at the shelter. Salamander just wanted to chitchat, but we wanted to sleep!
What an interesting memorial! I looked up Audie Murphy because I wondered why there was a memorial put on the trail and found that his plane crashed near there. I wonder why all the rocks are stacked by the stone? I suppose it is just a way for hikers to be a part of 'building an altar" on the trial. Just a little research, and I found a lot of scriptures about altars. One of my favorites was very simple, but I like it -- see if you can figure out why. It's from Judges 6:24 -- "Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and named it [a]The Lord is Peace." Yeah, I like that! Some folks say that the stones on a altar represent giving something over to God -- I like that, too. peace....Deb
ReplyDeleteAudie Murphy was also an actor.
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