15 on the TM done.  Of course, it's now raining. Ha.

Z, my husband will find out either Monday or Tuesday when he receives his blood test results.  Then, he'll do a gastro consult because he assumes it's a stomach ulcer (his reflux is worse than mine).  The other options, we don't want to contemplate yet (cancer).

sapf - sounds like a fun month.

Damaris - I hope your husband gets good news.  The low RBC is scary, I know.

Z - it could just be the heat slowing you down.  I sure felt more like myself today.

I agree, I enjoy seeing bears.  I've only had a couple of sorta scary encounters - one bear that came up as we were cooking dinner and tried to get our food. We threw things at it and scared it away, but it came back in the night, got our food from the tree, took down another tree with food on it belonging to some other hikers, then circled our tent for a while.  We laughed, but it was also a bit worrisome.  Then in Alaska at Denali we ran into a mama grizzly with yearling cub.  They were between us and the road a half mile away, with a river on one side and a steep mountain on the other.  We sang loudly and badly and they let us pass by.  The cub came toward us, out of curiosity, and mama put herself between us and the cub but she let us go by.  We were trying to figure out how bad it would be to jump in the river and swim (with packs), but fortunately we were able to avoid it.  Adrenaline rush! Most of our other encounters were a lot more prosaic: see bear, see bear run.  One black bear in California followed us for a mile or so, just downhill 20 yards from the trail.  We crossed a road and it turned around, fortunately. It's lack of fear was scary.