Are we becoming morning people? Or maybe we just can’t stand the smell of ourselves so much that we both woke up 5 minutes before we thought our alarm was going off. I say “thought” because someone set the alarm for the wrong time. It was Bunny’s iPad we were using, so, for simplicity sake, we’ll just blame her. All this after we both got up in the middle of the night to perform a camp perimeter check. I marked right while Bunny marked left. The relief we felt was so intense when we found out it was only 12:30 and we had 6 more hours of sleep ahead of us. We’d only been in bed for 4 hours. We were both concerned with our shortened night of sleep.
We have already perfected our complete, in the tent, breakfast/pack-up routine. We were all ready to go by 7:40—a record early start for us on the PCT. A big contributor to our progress comes from the fact that we are heading into town so we have porcelain in the near future and don’t have to endure the whole digging of hole/thousand bites on the ass routine. Sadly, not both of us have the bowel control I developed while attending Boy Scout camp. It was not uncommon for me to hold it for an entire week until I could return to my “home field advantage.”
Chandler was a bit slower than us breaking camp. She caught up to us as I was pacing back and forth on the trail waiting for Bunny. I stopped dead when I saw her and asked “did you hear that?” She stopped and tried to listen. “I’m sorry. It must have stopped. I don’t hear anything.” “It was just nature calling Bunny.”
We made it to the pickup point with 15 minutes to spare. Another couple from Sweden arrived a few minutes behind us. They are averaging 25 miles per day and are planning on heading back out today. As I thought might happen, Patrick “First One” was returning to the trail. He saw us and gave us a thumbs up. Amazon had still sent him a charger and he had put our name on it. Our battery woes were over. Seven people got out of the truck and five got back in and we picked up another two just a mile down the road.
Doug, our trail angel driver, dropped us off right at the general store. We went right in and were able to get one of the hiker rooms upstairs for two nights to allow Bunny’s hips some recovery time. We have a room with a shared bathroom for only $30/night. Misha, who we met yesterday ended up with the other room. Misha is from Seattle and is hiking all of Washington in 30 days. It was only 9:15 and we were done hiking and knew where we were going to spend the night, so on to food.
Trout Lake is limited on eating establishments. In fact there’s kind of a monopoly in town with the Gas station/espresso bar/cafe so it didn’t take us long to decide. We chose to try out the huckleberry pancake breakfast since we’ve been hearing so much about huckleberries. They taste like blueberries but look like elderberries. After a leisurely breakfast, we headed back to our room to do laundry and shower.
It was a leisurely day where we just hung out and waited for other hikers to come and go. It was very reminiscent of Werner Springs earlier this year. Until we got there and started meeting other hikers, we had felt pretty much alone on the trail. We met probably a dozen other hikers but the majority are heading south. Hero showed up around noon and told us Wea and Someday should be in soon. We ended up meeting them for supper at the cafe.
EFG
Glad to see you’re back on the trail. I admire your fortitude with the bugs – have you tried those mosquito nets that attach to hats? At least you might be able to keep them off your faces. Take care.
I didn’t bring my headset because my glasses fog up when I wear it. Having said that, we are getting headsets in our next shipment from home. We’re covering as much skin as possible and trying to move fast. Moving fast is the best defense and least likely thing we can do.