Captain's Log: Day 80

July 1, 2016

After our 35 mile day we slept in a bit. Unfortunately this meant the mosquitos were up by the time we started packing up. After an hour of descent we were out of the woods and the bugs dissipated. We began hitting pristine lakes offset by 50 foot climbs.

5 miles out the mirror-like lakes ended and we began the final descent to Echo Lake. I ran into Peaceful Warrior, the French Canadian we had met in Seiad Valley. He had jumped back down to do the Sierras and reported that the snow we had gone through in Ashland was actually worse than that in the Sierras.

The closer we got to Echo Lake the more day hikers we saw. It was almost overwhelmingly packed by the time we made it down to the parking lot and general store. We got lunch and beers and sat people watching for a bit while trying to figure out the best place to hitch into South Lake Tahoe from.

Highway 50 seemed the best bet so we walked another mile to the crossing and tried hitching there for 40 minutes. The holiday weekend traffic was heavy and we were surprised how little luck we were having.

Turns out there was a parking area another mile up the trail. Once we got there we were picked up almost immediately. We got dropped off at the post office, picked up packages, got some lunch, and then walked to the beach! We met a local woman, Kyra, with her daughter and talked with her for a bit about the town. Before long we were beginning to burn and relocated to the Safeway where we sat and people watched for a few hours before walking to a Starbucks.

Ostin met us there shortly after we arrived. He looked quite a bit cleaner than the last time we had seen him in LA six weeks earlier. We headed to Basecamp Pizzeria to cash in on our free thru hiker personal pizza.

Raptor's parents were letting us stay at their condo for the weekend (huge thank you!) and we had an hour drive to get there. It had been a long day and we all passed out shortly after arriving.