June 23, 2016

An uneventful morning. We continued along the ridge for the first half of the morning without much to comment on. We crossed paths with Homestretch, Gilligan, and a few others before we began the long descent down to Belden.

The trail in this section was overgrown, washed out, and in need of some serious TLC. It was slow going and the mosquitos were out but mile by mile we made it down. We ran into Nemo, from Kennedy Meadows, at one snack break and caught up with him a bit. It was sad that they would be north of Ashland when we flipped around.

The trees that had been providing shade gave way to small a bushes and it got hot in the direct sunlight. On the plus side it did mean the mosquitos were gone. We met our first horse and rider on the trail heading the opposite way on a particularly narrow portion of trail. I saw it coming across a very small valley and was able to find a place to step aside. Rickets was not as lucky and was caught on the blind side of a corner and had to back peddle pretty hard.

Down at the road we called the Braatens, the Belden trail angel family. They lived a mile up the highway but generally offered rides because of how windy and narrow it was. Unfortunately for us they were out of town for the weekend. We tried hitching for a while but gave up and started walking. We made it up to the house without incident and dropped our bags off (the hiker guest house still being open even with the family gone) and then headed another half mile to the RV park cafe for lunch.

I had not been able to find my package among those at Little Haven and was hoping someone at the village post office (which the cafe also served as) would be able to help me. They couldn't get into the PO boxes, however, so we settled for burgers instead. The burgers were good but he service was very slow and it was almost 4:00pm by the time we made our way back to Little Haven.

The evening consisted of phone calls, foot soaks, showers, and chocolate pancakes. I would have to walk up the next morning to meet Alan, the mail delivery man, in order to collect my box. He didn't arrive until 7:30am so we would be able to sleep in a bit. After taking care of the odds and ends we settled down in real beds.