June 17, 2016

It was another cold rainy morning. The three of us hit the trail hard, trying to stay warm. The trail was covered in wet overgrowth still and pushing through it prevented any warming up or drying out. After a few hours Loopy decided to set up her tent to warm up. Rickets and I hadn't quite hit that point yet and decided to push on with the hopes that the clouds would burn off in the next hour or two.

They began to clear and we started getting short windows of almost sunlight. There were also windows of almost downpour though and we kept on moving quickly.

I got to the side trail leading in to the Burney Falls Park and decided to take it. I had heard tell of hot dogs at the general store and figured it was as good a place as any to wait for the others, especially as plans for where we would meet back up with Loopy hadn't been clarified in the heat (or should I say freezing cold) of the moment when we split up earlier.

Rickets saw the sign I had drawn pointing I to the park but unfortunately did not find the general store his first pass through. He ended up doing the entire falls loop trail before we met up.

We hung out for a while eating and people watching as rain showers came and went. I decided to head down to see the falls myself before a particularly heavy burst of showers sent me back up to the pavilion.

As it neared 3:00pm we decided to pack up and hike the remaining 8 miles to second road into the town of Burney where we would have service and be able to rendezvous with Loopy. It had a strange desert feel to it with many bleached tree trunks and remnants of a burn.

Just before the highway into town we hit the wild bird cache at mile 1409. While we would've hung out for a while normally, this time we were only focused on getting I to town before it began raining again. We signed in and snapped a photo before finishing the last bit to the road.

We were passed by quite a few cars with no luck. After half an hour the sprinkles began and we got worried; wet dog smell is bad enough - who wants to pick up wet thru hikers? Just then a van stopped for us and the driver, a local electrician, gave us a ride in right to the motel where Loopy had already gotten a room having hitched in from the first highway. We spread out all the wet everything and headed for dinner at the local country kitchen before calling it a night.