We awoke at 7:30 to the sounds of everyone packing up for the day. Brownie and Greg had a 17 mile day ahead of them so they needed to get going. As usual, we were the last ones out of camp around 9:30. It was a nice easy hike all the way down to Longmire—3.8 miles with a 1000’ elevation drop. When we got to the Nisqually River, we really got into day hiker country. The overlook on the river is right on the road so a lot of people actually manage to get out of their cars and explore a bit on foot. We did meet a guy with a puppy crossbred between a black lab and a weimaraner which we immediately fell in love with—we have a winner for Keebler!
The walk to Longmire flew by. We went straight to the Wilderness Center to pick up our food cache where we ran into John and Jenny for one last time. They had gotten up early to have breakfast in the restaurant because they were scheduled for Devils Dream tonight. From here on out they will be doing a couple miles a day more than us so they can get out Wednesday while we aren’t finishing until Thursday. We said our last good byes.
Next we went to the restaurant in Longmire Lodge for lunch and reorganization. We tried to dry out some of our wet items on the baseboard heaters while we were in the restaurant. They were very accommodating to us and gave us an isolated table where we had access to electrical outlets and not close enough to other diners to be offensive to their olfactory senses. While we ate our $60 lunch of black and blue burgers, fries, cobbler, and tea, we also charged all of our camera batteries and wrote some postcards. We also refilled our water bottles (always take advantage of not having to filter) and bought a few necessities (advil).
We had killed a few hours and had to get on to camp. As soon as we hit the trail, we came upon a couple sitting in the trail crying. We asked if they were ok and she said she was just excited and thrilled to finish the trail. They had done the trail without a tent or stove, sleeping wrapped up in plastic at night to get out of the rain. This was a bit rougher than I’m willing to go.
It wasn’t a long hike at 3.5 miles, but the elevation gain of 1100’ hit us hard with full packs and over full stomachs. Pam’s heels started rubbing so we stopped on a bridge and I cut some moleskin patches for her. While we were doing that, a family of 7 hiked by. The kids ranged in age from 15 to 6. I couldn’t imagine any family I’ve ever been associated with pulling off a feat such as this—5 kids and happy to be out hiking; Pam’s kids complain if you park too far out in the parking lot at a restaurant. They were just going to Devils Dream for the night, so we sent our greetings to John and Jenny with them.
We got into camp by 4 and laid out everything to dry while we got water and made supper. This will be a dinner we always remember, and not in a good way. We decided to experiment with a few different combinations on this trip to give us some ideas for thru-hiking options. Tonight it was stroganoff noodles with a package of salmon mixed in. We had to eat it because we had the right amount of food and couldn’t afford to throw it out. We took turns eating a bite at a time. The secret was small enough spoonful’s so that you didn’t have to chew or taste it. This will go down in history as “salmon shots.” Even alternating shots, we couldn’t force ourselves to eat it all so I walked out of camp a ways and left an offering to the little animals of the forest. I’m sure the dead animals we saw the next day had no connection to this food.
We went to bed early because we knew we had a tough day tomorrow. It will not be our longest day, but it has a lot of elevation gain and loss so we needed rest. The salmon shots weren’t sitting well in our stomachs.