Nelson Creek - Feather River 7/30/10 25.6 miles

We woke up to a rather chilly morning, therefore we took our time and built a fire to help get us going. We knew that we had a long day ahead of us, so we got started. Today really was an eventful day. The hiking itself wasn't difficult, although the section of the Plumas Forest that we walked through involved jumping over many hurdles, literally. There were hundreds of fallen trees still covering the trail. This slowed us down a bit and gave me a few nice scratches. Te majority of the day, we walked through flat, shaded forest, which was nice. The second half of the day, we crossed many forest roads on the trail and did a lot of uphill ridge walking. Te dirt on this section is very fine and seems to somehow end up on every inch of your body. We stopped and took several snack breaks today and consumed a good amount of junk food in order to keep us moving. At the end of the day, we were becoming really tired. Our feet were ready to retire the Crocs. I had now been walking in mine for about 60 miles and Chris had been walking in his for about 90 miles. Every now again we would shout out the number of miles it was until we arrived at Buck's Lake to get our new ones. So anxious to have happy feet again. We were almost to camp. We spotted the Feather River and walked over a nice bridge to get to our campsite. As we walked up the trial to camp, a huge dog began to bark There was guy, Chris, camping in one of the spots with his dog. He gladly welcomed us to come on down, and so did his dog. It felt great to wash off at the river. My feet and legs were filthy. We sat up camp and ate dinner while we talked to Chris. He and my Chris discussed good tips on how to get your foot in the door with the forest service, since this Chris currently worked for them. Moto, his dog, was very cute, but kept trying to hump my arm, so I had to distract him with a game of fetch..haha. Chris gave us some more good advice and we had some laughs with him. This is one of our best camping spots yet and the stars never shined so bright :) -KB