Sunday, June 29, 2014

Camino 2014: Day 1, St. Jean to Roncevalles (Emily)

Miles today: 15.6
Miles Total: 15.6

Positives of today; We didn't die.

We woke up around 6:00 to be ready for breakfast at 6:30. I had woken up twice in the middle of the night wide awake, excited, thinking it was time to start walking. We had some bread with jam on it and were ready to start walking. It didn't take long before the road started going up...steeply. March assured us "It won't be like this all day." He lied.

The walk started with steep hills, then kind of flattened out, then went downhill for a little. Steep, flat, down, repeat. Eventually the flat and down started coming less frequently. Soon it was steep, steeper, steep, repeat. After a while March informed us we had just done 3 Mt.Pisgahs. We weren't even a third of the way done.

Around 11:00 we stopped at an outcropping of rocks overlooking the valley.  It was so pretty! We all took off our shoes to give our feet a break, and ate lunch there. After everyone was done we started walking again. A little past 2:00 we got to a point where we could see the town we would stop at in the distance. But after going up all day, you know what has to happen eventually. Going down. Us girls of course were excited to see a road that didn't go up, but March knowing better wasn't as thrilled. The sign estimated 1hr and 15min till we got there. It only took 10 for us to realize uphill wasn't so bad. The whole way down consisted of us talking out alternatives to getting to the bottom such as; rolling down, sliding on our backpacks, etc. Lanie decided they should just make monkey bars that cover the 3 kilometers.

To reward ourselves we all decided to have dinner off the pilgrims menu that night. At 7:00 we headed down, excited to be able to relax and have our food brought to us. The first part was pasta, Lanie of course had seconds. Next came the fish, still looking like a fish. We all had a good laugh at Mimi's reaction to it. And lastly, dessert!! They took everything off the table, except for our spoons, so of course we're all thinking ice cream. Finally the time comes. All the workers walk out and start handing out... Yogurt. Flavor? Natural. You could say that's not exactly what we had in mind.

Overall it was a good day. We saw some amazing things that included a majority of beautiful landscapes, being surrounded on the path by herds of sheep, horses rolling around in the grass up in the mountains, and we even got to see two sheep dogs at work. 

And for those of you always wondering whether the saying goes "It's all up hill from here." Or "It's all downhill from here." Let me tell you, they're both bad. I'm sure it goes "It's all flat ground from here." It probably just got lost in translation along the way.

All I know for sure is, we're going to sleep well tonight!

Emily

Special thanks for the day go to:
James and Sahra

Our mile sponsors:
Sahra Nielsen, Eileen Sanders, Joseph and Toni Connole, Kevin and Rhonda Durfee, Auna Godinez, Mark Laakso, Hannah Stebnicki, Luis Nieto-Varo, and Grace Kyser 

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