Miles: 17.6 Steps: 37,803 Elevation Gain: 2,790 feet I woke up this morning and while I devoured my strawberries I thought about my foot. Do I really have a stress fracture? Am I making a bigger deal of this than I should? Am I really just fine? So, to try to answer these questions I decided to hike. I didn’t want to bail far off trail only to learn I was fine, so why not go for it? The first couple of miles didn’t go the best. (They were beautiful though, with a big rock scramble to start things out!) My foot hurt and I really thought I might regret hiking on it and injuring it worse. I took breaks and went slow and was pretty pain free after that. I hiked with Stump for much of the day today. We get along quite well and it was fun to talk and laugh. She is struggling a bit at finding a lot of positive attitudes on the trail. St this point a lot of thru hikers are in a kind of “grind mode,” even though there’s almost 1,000 miles left to hike some have lost a little of the list for life and socializing they had more of at the beginning. This disappoints me as well, but so is the way of the world. Next, it started raining, a little at first, then a bit stronger. I set up my tarp near the shelter and hung out under it for quite a while as it rained and as I relaxed. Some BIG thunderstorms came rolling through as well. I was camped almost directly on a ridge so that was a bit concerning, but I’m still alive to write about it! Excited to see what fun tomorrow will bring!