We haven’t been sleeping well since the debate. It’s like we’re in a living nightmare when the president of the United States will not condemn white supremacy or agree to a peaceful transition if he should lose the election. Instead, he throws out false claims about a rigged election and offers no proof even though his own AG and FBI Director have both testified before Congress that there is no evidence of any corruption or ballot tampering. Both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and peacefully accepted defeat. I keep waiting for condemnation from top Republicans (Mitch McConnel, where the f#$& are you?). The only bright spot I’ve seen is that the Biden campaign raised $3.8M during the debate and $4M the hour after it. We aren’t the only ones scared by what we saw.
The new room we got last night was in a corner of the building on the back side overlooking the golf course. They made sure the rooms beside us and below us were empty. Bunny went so far as to buy some melatonin yesterday which we took before bed. We slept like babies. Yes, I cried myself to sleep and wet the bed, but it was a warm feeling all around me.
Around 8, I got up and made a pot of coffee. We are in town and Bunny is supposed to do town cooking, yet I performed this extra, thankless service for my wife. I even got out the yogurt and actually served my wife breakfast in bed: powdered donut holes, blueberry yogurt, avocado, and hot coffee. I was trying to convince her to let me stay in town one more night so I could sleep in a real bed on my birthday. She would have none of that (even though we always have beds on her birthday!). The best she would do was agree to let me sleep on the floor if we stayed another night. Everyone thinks Bunny is so sweet.
We turned our keys in at 11:01. The manager met us outside the office and asked if we had a better night last night. She could tell by our smiles and near perkiness (our packs are pretty heavy with 5 days of food) that we were in much better moods. We’ll be staying here again when we finish the TRT.
Bunny did check the Tahoe Basin NFS page and discovered that restrictions have been eased. We can use camp stoves once again (legally, that is). Dispersed camping is allowed along the PCT and should be allowed on the rest of the TRT by the 8th. It looks like we are an official “go.” As long as the official campgrounds were open, we were going to hike the trail. Add to all this good news clear blue skies and we are off to the start of a great day.
Since it was already past 11, we might as well eat one more town meal. With the restrictions eased, we could stretch the 5 days to South Lake Tahoe into 6 and take a zero there. That way, we could be in town to watch the Vice Presidential Debate. Since the two candidates are both too old and one is obese (unless his doctors have him grow another inch this year), there’s a very good chance that the VP will end up in office. One little hamburger at the same place we stopped on the way in makes this change of plans possible.
With overfull stomachs, we actually started hiking a bit after noon. Within a half mile of the lake, all the people disappeared. If we saw anyone, it was bikers coming down hill. Why is it we never see bikers peddling uphill? It only took us an hour and a quarter to travel the 2.5 miles to get us back up to 7000’. We rewarded ourselves with a break on the side of the trail.
A very nice couple in their 60s walked by and stopped to talk for a bit. They are here in Tahoe because their main house in Sanoma is smoked in. They managed to protect it from fires twice this year and now they just want some smokeless air. We really enjoyed talking with them. I didn’t have the nerve to ask if they had children. I would have been willing to present ourselves as candidates for them if they were childless. It would be a shame for a couple of really nice homes to sit empty if something were to happen to them. I always try to be of service.
We got to the detour and couldn’t decide which route was open today. The sawhorse closure was off to the side of the trail. We thought it best to stick with the closure route. Since we already had walked it, we took another alternate route which put us in the heart of a very nice subdivision. We would gladly take anyone of these homes. We saw a couple for sale and said we’d sign the papers today if it was under $200K. We were heartbroken upon hearing the average price in this neighborhood was over $1M; lots start at $300K. Note to self, start buying lottery tickets again.
The road was mostly in the sun and I started to overheat and feel a bit week. To our surprise, one of the homeowners offered to give us a ride through the neighborhood to the trailhead. I don’t know if he was genuinely nice or worried we were casing things. I think the former. Several people in Tahoe City stopped to talk to us when we had our packs on. I don’t think homelessness in these zip codes is as big a problem as the rest of the state.
There was active logging going on the rerouted section of trail we had come up just 2 days ago. A woman from the neighborhood told us she didn’t think we could get through. I went up to the loggers and asked. I figured if they wouldn’t let us pass, they might give us a ride to the other end of the reroute. It was close enough to quitting time that they let us go through.
We were both dragging a bit. I guess our bursts of energy on Tuesday was just a “town day surge” and not an actual “we’ve got our hiking legs back.” We stopped at a bridge that was just 1.5 miles from where we camped Monday night. Since we had the lunch in town and our current plan only calls for 5 days to South Lake Tahoe, we could camp in the same place and not have to carry water. It wasn’t a hard sell to get Bunny on board.
We made it to camp before 4:30. 9.3 miles in 4.5 hours and most of it uphill. We might get our legs back in a couple of days when we shed some food weight. We set up the tent then Bunny took care of our beds while I filtered water and got stuff together for supper. We decided to just have a non-cook meal with some of the heavier items we carried out of town: celery, cheese, cashews, guacamole, and corn chips. We weren’t too hungry.
We crawled into the tent to change into our pajamas. I checked the time and it was still 10 minutes before 6. It will be a struggle to get Bunny up tomorrow with only 14 hours of recovery. It was a long hard day, we’ve been awake almost 9 hours already. I’m wondering if this was the plan when she bought the melatonin.
EFG