Got up and went into town for some coffee, a whole two block trek. Called Cora and got caught up on email while drinking 40oz of coffee. Walked to the bakery, really wanted a biscuit sandwich but they were out, so onward I walked. Ended up at Three Fingered Jack's bar/restaurant since they had breakfast. My Dad said the bar used to be pretty cool/original vintage but then in an unfortunate incident, the 1980s happened and the decor got "updated".

Caught up with Internet things. Several people that I was hiking with finished the trail in the last few days. A couple others finished and wrote about "hiking 2668 miles from Mexico to Canada" on Facebook, which several people on the trail consider to be "laughable bullshit".

I was quite irked when I read that but am trying to let sleeping dogs lie (nice pun Craig). As I have said before, I don't care if people skip the trail...I just want them to be honest. I am not even talking about missing a few miles, I am talking about skipping 1/4th of an entire state, plus skipping some of the harder sections because they didn't feel like doing it. Sure, that is fine, just don't pretend you hiked it. I know if I bitched about it on the Facebook page a bunch of the comments would be that HYOH moniker. (Hike Your Own Hike....which unfortunately also gets said a bit too much, especially when people want to avoid any personal responsibility).

This kind of crap happens every year though. Even in 1996 a local in Seiad Valley told me he took a whole pickup load of hikers up to Cook & Green pass. It saved them several miles of hiking and a 5000 foot climb. Not me, I've climbed that motherfucker twice now.

(gee, can you tell that this really bothers me?)

So okay, back to the news.

Went to the hardware store and bought a tarp. I wanted to have a bit more protection from the rain/snow if needed. Walked to the outdoor store and bought another gas canister. This town is very well stocked on isobutate gas canisters, at least four stores have them. The store was a bit of a zoo because all of the deliveries showed up Friday afternoon (which the owner was apologizing for), so there were boxes everywhere. On the upside, it also meant the store had a lot of stuff to choose from.

Got back to the hostel and packed stuff up. Travis and Lucinda came and picked me up. Their friends Eric and Julie were with them also. We drove to the grocery store in Twisp and got stocked up. I'm definitely ok with having extra food for this last leg.

We drove out to the cabin...it is a nice place. Travis and I walked around a bit. We went back and had beers with everyone on the deck. They talked about their swimming in the lake earlier. Eric mentioned how he had an epic belly flop into the lake, yet with such skill he was able to "direct the force of the impact directly to his testicles." That is quite impressive.

Eric had made lasagne for dinner. Travis and I ate a bunch of ice cream. By 8:00pm I was shutting down.

Woke up and saw it was dark outside. Looked at the time thinking it was around 5:30am. Nope, I did a double take...it was 11:00pm. I can't sleep due to thinking about the next few days so I'm killing time now.

Travis is going to drop me off in Winthrop in the morning so I can hitch up to the pass. This is of course unless they end up leaving earlier. I need to only go 60 miles in four days, but with the weather being really uncertain I need all the daylight I can get.