Spent the morning at the motel packing and reorganizing. Would have liked to have gone for breakfast but I didn't have time.

Oh yeah, yesterday I went to the front desk to ask if they had laundry service and/or if there was a laundromat in town. There wasn't. I wasn't looking forward to washing stuff in the sink but that is what the plan would be. As I was getting ready to head into town the woman who cleans the rooms told me I could use the washer next door at her house. So when I returned last night all my laundry was now cleaned and folded on my bed. I ran into her this morning, thanked her, and gave her five bucks.

Made it out of the room at checkout time. I'm low on cooking gas but didn't like the idea of hitching/busing up to Mt. Shasta City. After asking around on Facebook I took a novel approach to the problem. Get this, I looked up the "phone number" of the store in Seiad Valley and I "called them". Yes, they do have what I need.

Walked into town and got lunch at the bakery. There I set up my new backup drive and got photos/video backed up. Will be nice to be carrying a lighter backup drive with me. In case you haven't read earlier, I don't like the idea of all my photos sitting on my laptop. The laptop I mail to post offices every few hundred miles. I carry a small backup drive with me so I have dupes of the media and don't have to worry so much about the laptop box going missing.

Went across the street to the coffee shop and spent a few hours there updating the blog. Making the entry for 7/14 took a while since I had to put in all the then/now photos for Stand By Me. The couple that owned the place were really nice. She gave me some day-old cookies before I left.

The coffee shop closed at 4pm and the PO at 5pm. Went to the pub to do some final laptop work. I still cannot believe in 2013 there is no fast way of deleting all the photos off the iPhone. Yes, I know you can download them to the computer and then have it delete them, but this takes forever. Syncing doesn't erase the camera roll either.

The PO was closing soon so I hurried over there and mailed my bounce box to my PO box in Portland. I have no resupplies in Oregon where I can also mail stuff out from, most are resorts and whatnot. I figure maybe Cora or a friend visiting can just bring me my bounce box when I need it.

Ice cream at the grocery store was next on the agenda. While out front I was trying to decide which I-5 entrance ramp to hitchhike from. Just then a woman stopped and asked me if I was on the trail. She lived in Castella and could give me a ride, she just had to pick up a couple things. Problem solved!

Her name was Adele and she had worked at the Castle Crags State Park for a number of years. Really nice lady. She dropped me off and I was back on the trail again...after a few checks of the Internet. This guy named PK whom I knew from my early 90's Red Robin days had sent me $25.00. Red Robin had this trite saying of "We have an unbridled desire to create happy guests". (It was a restaurant in case you were wondering, not a whorehouse) This restaurant was also the place where one of the main mucky muck's kids saw something wrong in a restaurant and said like "It's the little things that make a restaurant big. (forgotten name) - Age 10". A day or two later that quote was framed and put up in all the restaurants. I went into work a few days later and the framed sign was gone. I asked one of the managers if they finally took it down since people thought it was a joke. Manager _____ said to me: "No, I ripped it off the wall and threw it in the dumpster....I don't need a fucking 10 year old telling me what is important" It was then I learned of something called "politics"

Ahem, anyways, let us move ahead 20 some years into the present and thank Mr. PK.

Walked for a while up the trail and saw a girl I didn't recognize camped a bit off the trail. I said hello and we introduced ourselves from afar. Her name was Wild Child. Her foot was having problems and she was turning around to go spend a few days in Mt. Shasta City. She said she got her trail name from someone who thought she was "wild" for doing the PCT alone and being only 19. (later when I mentioned the Stand By Me bridge, she hadn't seen the movie...then I also realized that River Phoenix was no longer alive when she was born, I tried not to have an age freakout).

Wild Child said it didn't really fit her personality since she wasn't really wild. I told her to flip the "w" upside down and be "Mild Child". She really liked that idea and it sounded like she wanted to start using that.

Oh yeah, I am hiking in cutoffs now. I had Cora mail me some. Mostly I'm doing it for two reasons. One is because I think I saw someone wearing them in the 1973 National Geographic book on PCT. The second is just out of spite for one Internet poster who complained about novice hikers reading Cheryl Strayed's book and then "probably hiking the trail in cutoffs". I do have to shorten them though, boy they are hot. (as in non-cool temperature, not fashion sense).

Camped at a little stream called "Dump Creek". It isn't a dump so I don't know why it is named that...the water looks pretty clear too. Another hiker named Broomstick just walked by. You slow up a couple of days and you see all kinds of new folks.

Onward to Etna..