I walked up to the shelter dragging enough wood for a small cook fire. It seems the two guys already at the shelter had a different idea. They had already begun burning entire trees.

The two guys were brothers from an hour away.

“You’ll like my daughter,” Allen says to me. Well, well, well. I only met him thirty minutes ago.

His daughter and son came in a few minutes later. His son unpacks his stuff looks to me and says, “Hiker, you want a carrot?”

Before I could respond an entire carrot fresh picked from his garden this morning, still caked in dirt, was in the air coming at me. This night is going to be good.

Allen had brought entirely too much food, cooking spaghetti, preparing a fresh salad, boiling carrots, toasting a baguette.

Great food, blazing fire, cute girl, family with a sense of humor. And you thought I was going to be roughing it.