Day 1 in the books

Hello from Pinney Bridge Campground. We hiked 9 miles today and actually made pretty good time. We were on the trail almost exactly at 10 am and made it into camp at 2:30. With a lunch break thrown in we averaged 2.5 miles an hour. That may seem slow unless you've ever had 35 lbs on your back! I'm mindful of our hiking pace with some of the big mile days we'll have on the Long Trail in July.
The trail today passed through a variety landscapes. We started out with a big descent down deadman's hill through a mature forest of mostly hardwood trees. The next hour or so was spent passing through a variety of marshes, swamps and beaver ponds. The trail did follow the clear flowing waters of the Jordan River for a while, which made for pleasant hiking. We had an up close view of a pileated woodpecker too. It flew across the trail less than 10 feet in front of us. They are pretty cool birds. Early settlers called them "thundercocks" because of the sound they make drilling into trees. Pileated's are an indicator of a healthy forest because they need large stands of trees to survive.
The campground for tonight is really nice. It has a hand pumped well, vault toilets and picnic tables, which is the backcountry equivalent of staying in a Hilton. There are a couple other groups of hikers staying here, one with a rescue dog named Winston. Looks like we'll have someone to chase off any nighttime visitors to the campground!
Currently we are hanging out in the hammock listening to the Tigers on Mary's phone. If only we had a cold beer!
That's all for now. Here are some pictures from today's hike:

Packing

We leave tomorrow for the Jordan River Valley.  The night before a trip is when the excitement over an approaching trip runs head-on into the realization that none of the packing has been done and it’s 8:00 at night.  It never matters how far in advance the planning begins for a trip, or how excited we are.  Invariably, it ends being midnight on a school night searching for the carabiners that go on the nalgene bottles so they don’t fall out while hiking.  We live in a two story house, meaning that the most maddening part of the process usually goes something like this:  me:  “where is the jet boil?”  Mary: “um, I think it’s in the kitchen (downstairs).”  I go downstairs, retrieve our jetboil cooking system from the pantry where normal people would keep food if they actually stayed at home and return upstairs to the third bedroom.  The third bedroom in our house has become a bit of staging room.  Normal people might house a child in such a room.  We have backpacks, sleeping bags, dry suits and skis, scattered in a most random fashion.  As soon as I sit down to resume shoving items into my backpack Mary asks “where is my raincoat?”  Me:  “I think it’s hung up in the basement next to the dryer.”  I head downstairs in search of the raincoat but see the trekking poles sitting by the door to the garage.  Not wanting to forget them, I put them in the car, and head back upstairs.  Mary:  “did you get my raincoat?”  and on the process goes for what seems like a never-ending period of time.  All the while, our two cats sit at the top of the stairs with their chins on the floor, starring glumly at the backpacks that they know predict their impending abandonment.  Eventually everything is found and shoved into the car and the anticipation of another outdoor adventure returns.  The late night packing and sleep loss are more than worth it in the long run.  In a few more hours we’ll be headed north.