The delayed end to a perfect day – and then Some Stats

Sleeping at Standing Bear Farm tonight – a hippy-ish community where you can buy some re-supply (luckily as I didn’t have enough food to get us to the next town) and have a meal and a beer, and pay for a camp site.

My phone’s battery is quite flat as I switched it on to take pictures so many times today. We came out of the Smokies and as we walked at lower altitudes I saw maybe 15 different types of flowers, where as up to now I have only seen 3. We walked amongst lush green trees and fast flowing rivers, it felt as if we were in a tropical forest

We did 29km today, and though I felt good up to 20km, and okay up to 25km, I felt dead tired for the next 2km and during the last 2km I was calling Trevor names in my head.

Some stats for you:

SNICKERS

We have eaten about R1000 worth of Snickers so far, 3kg of chocolate worth 12500 calories (between the 2 of us). We probably had the same rand value of peanuts, eaten mostly by Trevor.

DAILY DISTANCE

We target to do 24km a day and on most days when we don’t go into town we manage that. Thats about 45 000 steps a day.

AVG DAILY ASCENT

The highest we did was 1 650m and the lowest was 850m. Average is about 1 000 to 1 100m per day. Mom, that means if you stagger all the steps, we climb about a kilometer into the sky every day 😀

HOURS WALKED

On average 7 to 8 hrs a day

PEOPLE SEEN PER DAY

On non-town days probably 10-15 other hikers per day

NIGHTS IN BEDS

So far about 1 out of 4 nights were spent in hotel/lodge beds. We want to get this down to 1 out of 7 but bad weather influenced our decisions.

ARGUMENTS

0 so far, believe it or not

IRRITATIONS WITH EACH OTHER

One each.

I get irritated that when we rope in somebody who walks slower than us we don’t just let them step aside and walk pass them (as it is being done on the trail), we slow down so that we build up space between us and them. Trevor’s rule – drives me nuts!

Trevor got irritated with me when he reached for the cheese at lunch and I yanked it away and said “NO, we have eaten today’s budgeted food this is for 2mo”. (One can only fit in that much food in the bear vaults and it needs to last from one shop to the next). At least he got his sense of humour back and asked me to engrave on his tombstone “he died of hunger but at least didn’t go over Budget”

Are there any other stats you are curious about? Let me know and I will include it if I can.