A Day of Rest

Amanda brought some LTCs that
were sent to me. I may not get mail quickly
while hiking, but it arrives eventually!
These were created by
Nana C and the Seedlings.

August 3: In the past week, I racked up a remarkable number of miles: 26.0, 31.0, 30.6, 26.0, 31.2,  31.0, and 23.8 for a total of 200 miles--in a WEEK! I may have just set an all-time record for myself. If I wanted to take a day off, I thought, it was okay. And I definitely wanted to take a day off. I needed to do quite a bit of resupplying, and I had a lot of blog entries I needed to type up before I ran through the backlog that would run out in about a week. So, I took a zero day. Lest you've forgotten, I was in Yreka with Amanda, after having gotten off the trail the afternoon before. It's good to resupply when Amanda is around since she can drive me wherever necessary. =)

My most pressing concern, of course, was to resupply food, and we did that at Raley's. Surprisingly, we bumped into General Lee there--a through hiker I met briefly at the Heitman's place in Old Station. I didn't really expect to bump into any thru-hikers in Yreka since it was so far off the trail--very rarely does a thru-hiker travel that far off the trail without transportation available. I wouldn't have gone so far off trail if it wasn't for Amanda being there with the car.

I bought food first to get me from Etna Summit into Seiad Valley, then a second set of food that I'd mail to the post office in Seiad Valley that would carry me the rest of the way to Ashland. I was becoming quite the pro at mailing food to myself in the smaller towns along the trail. =)

The second most pressing resupply concern was shoes. Those expensive shoes I bought in Mammoth Lakes were starting to fall apart quite rapidly at this point. They carried me 700 miles, but it was finally time to retire them. I should have replaced them back in Dunsmuir, but I didn't want to stop long enough to shop for shoes. I thought--or at least hoped--they would last through Etna when I expected to see Amanda again. They did, but by then, they weren't even fit for a homeless man.

So it was off to the nearby Payless Shoes where I picked up a new pair that were on sale for just $15. I was pretty happy about that--even by Payless standards, that was pretty cheap.

And the Tortuga bares it all!
(Except in real life, there was no leaf
covering important parts of the anatomy!)

A couple of miscellaneous items turned out to be remarkably difficult to find, however--such as gloves to cut up and turn into "glovelets." My old glovelets I'd been using since Kennedy Meadows and they were wore out. I also wanted to find a new small bottle of hand sanitizer, but I couldn't find a small bottle of that stuff in several stores we checked. I finally gave up on those two items and decided they could wait until Ashland.

The rest of the afternoon I used to catch up with blog entries, create a winery on my farm (stupid FarmVille!), planted a bunch of soybeans, and used up minutes on my cell phone (which worked for the first time in two weeks!) by calling a couple of hikers. The only one I managed to get through to was Hiker 816 who I hadn't seen since Fuller Ridge. He was far behind me on the trail, but was planning to jump ahead to Crater Lake in another week where there was a good chance I might bump into him again. I hoped so! It would be nice to see him again. I told him I'd try calling again when I reached Ashland and find out where he was and let him know where I was.

I also showed Amanda all of the photos I'd taken since the last time I saw her, including that one of my feet with my dinner in the background. She saw that, absolutely disgusted by the photo: "Eeeeewwwww! Whose foot is that?" *hehe*

"Mine," I said, holding my foot up in the air. =)

"Eeeewwww! Get those things away from me!"

Even Charmin got a little LTC love. =)

One of the other things I enjoy about Amanda's visit is that she brings my mail that's piled up. Usually this consists of magazines and an occasional postcard, but this time it included some special LTCs in honor of my hiking adventures. I particularly liked the naked turtle hiking LTC. We set those up in the hotel as decorations. =)

And that's about all that happened today. I felt a little guilty taking a zero day--it was only day three of the WTA's Hike-a-Thon, and I was slacking off by not hiking! On the other hand, I already had over 50 miles under my belt after the first two day--probably more than anyone else, and probably by a long shot. I'll make it up later, I promised myself. Amanda did go off to hike a couple of miles during the afternoon in a nearby park. I stayed in the hotel and worked on blog entries, though.