Day 1 & 2

So much has happened since my last post. We left here early on December 29th and headed for the trail head. It was quite an adventure just getting there. With all of the rain they have had here we did a lot of mudding, which is a blast, especially when you are in a Land Rover. We managed to get stuck once, but fortunately we had the other Land Rover tow us out. It was so much fun! We never got to the trail head because of the conditions of the road, if you can call that a road. We had a late departure after signing in at the Rangers office and playing in the mud set us back quite a bit as well. We ended up hiking to our first campsite in the dark. We arrived at Montane Forest, which is in the rain forest at 10 and our porters had our tents setup for us. That was a very welcome site as we were all tired and wet. We did see a couple of Colobus monkeys and signs of elephants, man do they have big feet!

By the time we ate dinner and got settled it was 1:30 before we went to sleep. That made the 6:30 wake up call come all too soon. We left there and headed toward the Shira Plateau camp site. The hike was nice, albeit quite wet. About this point I was started becoming more and more thankful my father got me a nice rain suit for Christmas last year. The day brought us through the forest and into the plateau.

We spent the night at Shira Plateau camp site and in the rain. Dan Dittmer and his tent mate, Marnel King, had a river literally running underneath their tent. Dan said when Marnel would roll over he would feel like he was on a water bed. Amazingly they stayed dry. Thanks to the great Mountain Hardware tents for keeping them dry.

More to follow shortly.....