Hiking (Backpacking) 2:10:00 [2] 2.1 mi (1:01:54 / mi)
slept:10.0
Dolly Sods Wilderness, WV. From the Rohrbaugh Trail, (TR 508) to the Wildlife Trail (TR 560), to Forest Rd. 75. It had been hard to sleep overnight. I was sleeping in between Max and Samantha but neither moved for long. Both fell asleep quickly, after 10pm when I had gotten in the tent, and probably because they were tired. I however had a hard time right away. My pack in the vestibule was at the bottom of all the other packs and I hadn't already made a pillow out of my extra clothes like I usually do. The ground wasn't too lumpy but had a slight backward arch to it. It hurt me to lay on my back but I grit it out until it was easier to hold the position. Eventually when I needed to turn on my side, I found that my head wouldn't reach the ground. I tried the left side first. I found that my left shoulder problems, also experienced last year that also got better, weren't completely gone. I found it hard to adjust and angle my shoulder without more pain or just plain stiff inability to bend. I turned to my right side eventually. That worked better but with the bumps on the ground, it wasn't so easy either. I went through the same 3 positions over and over again, eventually falling asleep but waking regularly.
This was only broken-up by Max's usual wild dreams. One time he woke to say aloud that he didn't know where he was--he started feeling around in a mild panic. I experienced enough of Max's sleep walking to know he was basically in the same state of mind. He did similar things a few more times, and remembered none of it in the morning.
By the time it was light enough outside, Peggy thought it was time to wake up. Later she realized it was only 6:20am, not 8:20am as she thought. I had also been warm when I went to bed but as it got colder out, I found myself zipping-up and tightening my sleeping bag a lot to stay warm. Samantha woke us up for good a little before 8am. It had never rained on us. The storms Max and had seen the night before kept west of us.
We ate breakfast on the cliffs again and packed up. The way back was primarily uphill--about 700 vertical feet by the time we were done. Samantha again didn't like the mud but she did move through most of it better than the day before. When she got tired we'd take breaks but the cumulative effect wore her down enough to get her cranky. She got fussier with the mud and wouldn't move. To motivate her we'd wait behind her. She was sometimes standing on the trail and asking which way, partly meaning how do I get through the mud. It was like we were teaching her to walk again. When waiting behind her got too frustrating we'd move ahead of her. She eventually would move for this but was upset by it being akin to leaving her--a central and common adopted child deep-seated fear. She got upset enough at one point that she left the new hiking had that Peggy had gotten for her. I didn't see her set it down. When we caught with Peggy and Max, Peggy noticed and hiked back a quarter mile down the hill to retrieve it.
Making it back eventually, all of our spirits were better. We drove over to Mouth of Seneca for a view of the famed rocks, and some lunch. Rain finally fell as we drove there--lucky us. We were all too tired to hike-up the back side of Seneca Rocks (as I'd done before). Max wasn't interested in the few climbing stories I had when I'd scaled the wall in years past. We did however go to the visitor center. The old stores in Mouth of Seneca hadn't changed much since the 80s and 90s but the visitor center was completely different.