July 24, 2016
Despite the late night I was up early and quite hungry. A Texan hiker in the bunk room felt the same way and we headed over to the Alabama Hills Cafe. We got there 10 minutes before they opened and there was already a line queuing up. We were seated and swapped background and tales from the trail over a delicious breakfast before heading back over to the hostel.
No one else was up yet so I grabbed the notepad I had purchased and sat outside writing to wait for the rest of the gang to wake up. The room began waking up and slowly packing, most of them still riding the high of having just completed the John Muir Trail the day before. Someone finally went to ask about checkout time and we realized we had 10 minutes. The laid back morning instantly became a frenzy of packing. I dropped my pack off at the front desk (they were kind enough to watch it while I took care of a few errands). I headed over to a coffee shop hoping to use their computer to take care of a few work related things. Instead, I ended up just sitting there writing for a while. With the adjusted hiking schedule I had a plenty of time before I met up with Katy and Sadie and I decided to spend the day in town catching up on things.
I checked back into the hostel and joined two hikers from the bunk room the night before in a smaller room. The two were soldiers recently back from a tour oversees doing the High Sierra Route. They had run into a few problems and were regrouping and meeting up with their significant others to summit Whitney and call it a trip. I spent the next few hours taking care of pack repairs, catching up on the blog, and occasionally getting caught up in the movie the other two were watching.
The afternoon slipped by into evening. I called Lizy and spent a while catching up with her, not having had much of a chance to the day before standing out on the highway. The time difference struck again and she signed off to head to bed. I headed over to the Chinese place in town to join Honey Badger and Morning Star (arriving quite late from the planned time). After dinner we stopped by Elevation on the way to the bar. We talked with Neco and Miles there for a while as they closed up shop before heading over to the saloon.
The saloon was very much a townie scene and we left after one drink. The ladies were staying at a different hotel down the street from the hostel. It had a pool and we decided to hang out there for a while. We were joined by another hotel guest, Anastasia, and hung out talking and alternating between the hot tub and the pool until almost 12:30am when we called it a night as Honey Badger and Morning Star had a 6:00am bus to catch. We were surprised to find the hotel parking lot fairly busy. Upon inquiry, one of the hikers told us that everyone was getting ready to start a pre-sunrise ascent of Whitney. I was glad I was heading to bed.
