Day 45

9 miles

The plan for today is to do 9 miles in, have lunch, resupply, and come back out and do another 11 miles. The morning walk is rather nice. It was in the 70’s even that early in the morning. No rain at all and it was mostly downhill.

We get down to the road crossing around 11 am or so and it takes almost 10 minutes to get a hitch. The longest we’ve had to wait the entire trail so far. A shirtless gentleman with a heavy southern accent, a toothy grin and an overgrown Mohawk picks us up in his beat down Toyota pickup. He’s actually a very nice guy and gives us a lift right to the front door of the supermarket so we can resupply.

We have been running into a woman by the name of Day Owl over the past few days and have become friends. She is 41 but looks young 30’s. She’s hiked the PCT before where she met her current boyfriend and she’s a mountaineer. Such a cool person. The plan is to meet her at a Mexican restaurant across the street after our resupply on the way out. She’s having some friends from back home meet her at the restaurant as well so we all have lunch together.

The only thing we didn’t take into account was that they had a $5 mega margarita special. The first one goes down too easy because we are hungry and dehydrated so we keep them coming. Before you know it we are calling the hostel nearby to see if there’s any room for us to stay.

You gotta be adaptable on the trail and sometimes you just go where the day takes you. We go back to the hostel and play cards, chat, eat more, and relax on our unplanned nero day off.