Showering in the morning before going out has been pretty rare for me lately. I’ve been cleaning up a bit when I roll into huts in the afternoon, or showering when I arrive into town, but I haven’t been doing my usual morning shower routine. This morning, I had a shower. It was rather nice.

The weather was also rather nice. A bit warm, but a cool breeze. I was sweating a lot, but didn’t feel overly hot. Fairly decent overall.

The only real downside right now is that I’ve developed shin splints. Pretty sure it was due in part to the literal running I did a few days ago, along with the fast pace I was trying to keep up that day to get into town. Especially on descents. And now I’m paying the price.

Fortunately the trail is quite beautiful, and while I have longish days, I’m still beating the estimates by a lot, I’m just dealing with a fair amount of pain and discomfort. 4 more days and my legs can finally rest.

Anywho, the track goes up and down along the peninsula, crossing back and forth from one side to the other, meaning I get amazing views of both sides, and from time to time I get a peak thrown in with some really amazing views. But I’ll shut up and post pictures.

Also in the area there are lots of wekas. At the high point for the day there was one in particular which didn’t seem to care too much about my presence and was going about its day, so I got some good pictures of it.

They’re such weird little birds, and they are super cheeky. You don’t want to leave anything you care about near them as they are notorious thieves. But they’re just funny little things. I like them.

Along the trail there are numerous places to sit. I liked this one in particular because it felt like it was carved out of the trail, which I guess it kinda was.

Finally I got a view of my destination for the day.

After struggling down the hill with my shin splints I made it into my home for the night, took a shower, and chatted with the folks I’m sharing the place with. The nearby resort has a restaurant so I popped over there for dinner, the view was pretty good.

Sadly I am not sure if they have takeaway lunches anymore so I might just need to eat an extra big breakfast since there’s no lunch stop tomorrow. I have some snacks and such I can eat but was really counting on being able to take a packed lunch away. Oh well.

As far as my shin splints go, I’m not 100% sure I’ll be walking tomorrow. The road here goes directly to tomorrow’s destination, so there’s a possibility I could hitch it. Fortunately there seems to be a bail out from the trail to the road a few hours in, so if I need to I can do that. I should be ok though, I’ll just have to take it slow and take lots of breaks. Something I should probably do more anyways!

Oh, one thing which is pretty neat about this area. A lot of the things on the Queen Charlotte sound side of the peninsula are only accessible by boat or via the trail. So the trail itself is kind of a transportation corridor. Which means you get signs calling out accommodations and such off the trail in places. Pretty neat.

So far the “major” accommodation areas have had paved roads leading up from the north side, up and over let the trail to the other, but there are a few places tomorrow and almost all of the next day where the trail and by boat is what you’ve got. Super cool.