By Leah Shoberg
Do burnt shoes, charred socks, and rations of a block of cheese and salami ring a bell? That’s right, the 15th annual Grantsbug trip. This year’s victims were Mike Ennis {our fearless veteran}, Tony Kohman, Mike Phelps, Adam Vernes, Dan Voaklander, Gabe Peterson, Kyle Kimrey, Trish Laumann, Aaron Sapp, Tony Cruikshank, Jamie O’Day, Heather Trowbridge, and myself. Our leaders were Doug Berg and Randy Nelson.
Arriving at school around 5:30 am to load the vans, we started off on a pretty good note leaving the school around 6:15 am. Making good time, we arrived at the starting point around 9:00 am.
We unloaded the vans and distributed the gear as equally as possible. We then built ourselves a fire while waiting for Doug and Randy to get back from dropping off the vans at the finishing point. They soon returned, so we donned our {heavy} packs and set off around 10:00 am.
Making good time we stopped for lunch around 11:30 and divided our rations of bagels, block of cheese, salami, chocolate and other assorted delicacies. After lunch, we set off again. With Doug leading the way and Randy bringing up the rear, we had to scale one of the several hills along the way before reaching the campsite.
We set up camp as quickly as possible and then relaxed around the fire to listen to some of Doug’s many stories. Then we ate a hearty meal of something from a box with noodles, paid homage to and honored the sacred spoon. We turned in around 8:30. It had been a long day.
We woke up around 7:00 and stuffed ourselves with as much oatmeal as possible before taking down camp and setting off again around 8:30. Making even more good time, we stopped for lunch. While dividing our rations of bagels, pb&j, butter from a squeeze bottle and salami we decided that our one goal was to get to the pizza.
So after seven more miles and three more hours of drinking Randy’s rustic tang, everyone was grateful at around 3:30 when the vans came into sight. Throwing our packs and ourselves into the vans we gleefully absorbed the heat from the vents, and set off for civilization and pizza.
Doug and Randy said this was the fastest any group had ever hiked this trail in the 15 years Mini-School has done it. We are good.