Spartan Hike - Day 11

 Hiker, and co-founder of American Spartan Inc, Captain Tommy Muir, continues to keep us updated on the day-to-day of the 425+ mile Spartan Hike, via emails spent from his phone.

"We awoke the morning of day 11 under the blanket of warmth provided by climate controlled rooms at Ragged Point Resort. We planned on taking advantage of their restaurant before our departure and had said we'd meet at 8. Everyone arrived riding high on the wave of a good nights sleep in a bed and a hot shower. We enjoyed a good breakfast and found it rather amusing that every last one of us took a shower prior to coming up for breakfast; that's definitely a characteristic of a grunt, we'll take full advantage of a comfortable situation as it may prove to be our last for long periods of time. Vehicles loaded and stomachs full, we pushed south to hammer out the days 19 miles.

With every step we took, we were pushing further out of the Big Sur area and the steep mountains and precious beauty with which she is comprised of. We encountered plenty of wildlife today, from both the sea and the plains. To our west, on nearly every beach we passed were rather large and rotund elephant seals who came ashore to do what appeared to us as to die but was actually to sun themselves. As the name would lead one to believe, these weren't the cute little seals you see swimming around in shows at Sea World, they were more in line with their first name elephant and they were monstrous and appeared very lazy.

To our east were cattle and they are exactly what you picture in your head but these cattle were slightly disturbing. As we'd close to within a couple hundred feet of them, they would cease all movement and stare at us until we passed by then they'd resume their grass trimming operations. This was definitely wierd for us, but we quickly deduced that it was wierd for them too as they probably don't see too many people hiking past them.

We made it to camp all hoping to find hot showers and beds but knowing it was back to the tents. As it was Dan's birthday, we asked him what he wanted for dinner, beef stew or pasta. He told us he wanted beef stew and he wanted us to eat pasta. We told him we liked his style but it'd be stew all around to save on dish duty. We ate, enjoyed the fire and retreated into our tents in preparation of another day on the trail."

         Tommy Muir