"Danny won't make the banana cream pudding. It's like he's afraid it's made of Satan or something"

Monday starts at 7:00 AM. Danny wakes up the boys and the adults wander out of their tents packing their gear. All of the meals on this trip require that water be boiled. For dinners, the boiling water is added to pouches of freeze dried food. For breakfast, the boys add it to packets of oatmeal, and the adults add it to bowls of Kashi. Hot chocolate and coffee (for adults) are available as desired.

After breakfast, the bags are packed again. Having dropped some weight from the meals we've eaten, we redistribute the weight in hopes of getting closer to the target pack weights. We're a lot closer this time.

Before leaving, we take a trip to a "50 foot waterfall" that lies "200 yards downstream." First, I'm certain it was more than 200 yards. Second, the waterfall sure looked like more than 50 feet tall. It was quite impressive. After a few pictures, we head back to camp where Molly, David, and Steve are waiting. As I come into camp, I tell Molly that we had an accident with her camera. "The boys were throwing rocks over the edge, and we thought it'd be fun to document the path of a rock. So we tied the camera to a rock, and I went to the bottom of the waterfall. Will threw the rock over, and I was supposed to catch it. Unfortunately, it was an incomplete pass." She didn't believe the story for some reason.

Very early in today's walk, we had our first encounter with mountain laurel. Mountain laurel is a pretty, small white flower and it grows in abundance at Pine Creek. In abundance. There were places on the trail where it was mountain laurel as far as you could see. We happened to be hiking during the peak of the bloom. As we entered this first gathering of the flower, the sun shone down on it and the forest shone in a heavenly shade of white. Very beautiful.

For the boys, the highlight of the day was John and Will getting into an enormous discussion of the Twilight series. Seeing it in print won't do the moment justice, but this is John's summary of the Twilight movie:

"Bella, I love you, I'll never leave you"
Two scenes later, "I have to leave you again". Then he comes back,
"Bella, I love you, I'll never leave you."
Two scenes later, "I have to leave you for some reason."
Why does she keep taking this loser back?

We walked into camp at the bottom of Four Mile Run, Right Branch. The campsite was small, and it was difficult to fit all of the tents into the space there, but we managed to squeeze them in with enough clearance to start a small fire to clear the bugs. The boys enjoyed the the small waterfall at the stream, which also provided very clear water for pumping. On a trip like this, we carry our own water filtration pumps because clean water isn't available along the trail. The filters take out sediments and bacteria, then push the water through charcoal. In some places, after all of this is done, the water has a yellowish tint caused by absorption of tannin from the plants in the stream bed. The beautiful thing about running water in small streams is that it hasn't had time to absorb the tannin and comes out very clear and tastes oh-so-good. That water from this campsite may have been the best we had all week.

The boys were quick to make dinner (for which we were proud) but soon had an argument about what to make for dinner. Their options were cheese cake or banana cream pudding. Danny was particularly opposed to the banana cream pudding which inspired a quotable moment when John¹ told us, "Danny is so against the idea of making the pudding. It's like he's afraid that it's made of Satan or something!" Part of me wishes they hadn't made dessert at all, however, as they had a hard time finishing all the food they made. Eventually, not even John¹ refused to eat any more. We were so shocked we have named a new state of being after him. This state of being is called Tonon and is the state obtained when one cannot physically consume any more food.