Today we walked fast - the path was easy. We stopped at Mt Louis Campground to have a second breakfast and received mobile messages from Rosemary our farm manager. We rang her immediately to discover that their house at Seville in the Dandenongs north of Melbourne had burned down, and Kieran has gone down to sort out the mess. She said she is shocked but OK.
It may be time for us to leave the US and go home - we have been hiking for nearly 3 months. It is a big load on Ro and Kieran to take on the farm and the business - this extra disaster is just terrible. Rosemary is adamant that they can manage and that we should keep on walking. So we keep on hiking and thinking about Australia and home. Ro and Kieran had a lovely house in the bush, and now its gone. When we hiked the long distance footpath through the French Alps - GR 5 - in 2000, our own house caught fire and burned half down - while our caretakers were there 'looking after the farm'. We felt a bit of deja vue.
We slog on to Big Meadows Campground. The place is run by the national park and there are thousands of people, with bears right in close. It reminded us a little of the campground at Wilsons Promontory in Gippsland - numbered campsites, packed tents, lots of noise. We do our washing, have a shower and enjoy a luxury 3 course meal served at the lodge. After dinner we sit in the lounge and listen to an old AT hiker who hiked in 2008 talking about his experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment