Belden - Chip River 8/2/10 10 miles

We slept in a bit, waiting for the P.O. to open. Walked down the hill with Burley's owner and accidentally fell into a bar. Haha! 9:30am whiskey and beer. We talked to the nice bartender about their weekly music festivals and such. We got to the P.O., made some pone calls planning our departure from the trail, even though we still have a ways to go. Got our awesome box from Sarah, with SO much food to keep up going.The P.O. we were at was actually a house. The lady that ran it was hilarious, stuck in the 70's and definitely from CA. It was definitely the most eccentric place I'd ever been. We sat outside and sorted out our boxes. We finally got on the trail about 12:30pm and walked a couple of hours. It was soo hot! The section had been hit by a fire. We had a large snack/lunch with Stealth, Hmmm and others. We saw our first rattlesnake as it crawled out from under Stealth's tent. Wow. We packed up for another 5 mile to camp.l Saw another rattler and did a whole lot of climbing, 3500' in 10 miles and were still not at the top. had a nice dinner. Crunched some numbers for the next week's hiking. It was a fun, hard day. -CM