Captain's Log: Day 60

June 11, 2016

At 6:30am I gave up on sleeping and, tired of listening to the two upstairs, packed up and headed into town to see what was open. The general store opened at 7:00am so I headed there to check out the selection and wait out the time until the cafe opened at 8:00am. I ended up talking to the man at the register about forest fires for around 40 minutes before heading over to the diner.

I ordered coffee and a sandwich and sat down with my laptop top to start catching up on the blog. A few minutes later Loopy and Rickets showed up. We took over a large table in the back room with a few outlets and reflected on the previous night as we ate.

The next stop was the grass in front of the library across the street. We spent the rest of the morning there alternating trips to the store to resupply and catching up with family and friends.

Around noon we finally got it together to get back on trail. We walked to the edge of town and stuck our thumbs out. No one seemed to actually be leaving town, just driving from one side to the other. Finally a man in a well traveled van stopped for us. There weren't any seats in the back so Rickets and I sat on the carpeted floor with Loopy up front. The van had apparently been across the US 18 times in its lifetime and was being kept alive with duct tape and prayers. It seemed like it was doing just fine climbing the roads back up to the pass.

All three of us were quite tired so when we made it to the first campsite less than 5 miles in we were fine calling it a day. The plan was to head to bed early and make up for the lack of sleep the night before but none of us were really able to sleep. I caught up on blog posts, Rickets explored the ridge line, and Loopy took it easy laying in the meadow. Eventually our actual bedtime arrived and we spread out in the grass to sleep.