Day 10: Diamond J to Margy’s Hut
When Marian called the Diamond J to set up our reservation she had been told there would be no problem shuttling us to a different trailhead in the morning but when we tried to reconfirm the arrangement last night the manager claimed she hadn’t realized we needed a second shuttle. Her husband had to help her get breakfast ready for the wedding party but after that she released him to drive us, so we ended up getting out by 8:30 which wasn’t bad at all.
The hike started out easily enough around a meadow but as we headed toward Sawmill Park the trail got steeper and steeper. We had started giving Carys raisins earlier in the week as a way to keep her going through the last fidgety mile or so of a long hike day, but over the course of the following days she had begun demanding them earlier and earlier in the day. Marian kept a stash in her pocket and whenever Carys stuck her arm out the side of the rain cover I would stop and Marian would hand one over. Finally today she was asking for them right after breakfast and because we were going up a steep hill I had to stop fairly regularly. Each time I stopped and she saw Marian she would stick her arm out and when I turned to start hiking again leaving her raisin-less, she would pitch a fit. I got so fed up of it that eventually I took you out of the backpack and told her to eat as many raisins as you wanted while we were stopped, because we weren’t having any more raisins while we were hiking. She stuffed her face for 15 minutes while we took a break but we had to pack up and get moving before she had completely finished because rain was not far away. Luckily she fell asleep soon after that and remained that way almost until we got to the hut. We had a bit of a hard time locating the trail at Sawmill Park; I think it would have been much more difficult if we didn’t have the GPS. We did find 
the intersection and sign but I think we would have wandered around the meadow for quite a bit if we hadn’t been guided. It was a fairly flat mile or so from there to the hut, which was lucky because it started to rain. I picked up the pace and barely got wet at all; Marian and Tom were a bit behind and they were soggy by the time they got to the hut.
