Day 37 - Thursday, June 3

Tenting behind Grumpy Bear's Retreat in Kennedy Meadows (left trail at mile 702.2).  Walked 4.2 miles today, a Nearo day.

Today we slept in and didn't set an alarm, but again, I woke up at some point in the night sweating (turns out Frank did as well).  We'll get this camping thing down eventually...  Woke up about 6 am and slowly got ready for the day.  Rolled out of camp about 7:30 and took it easy walking the relatively flat miles along the Kern River, to the road.  Along the way, we dropped into Kennedy Meadows.

Here, we reached our latest milestone: 700 miles!

Got to the road and walked the 0.7 miles to the general store.

Checked it out briefly and then went to the outfitter 2 Foot Adventures.  They told us that the showers behind the general store were open and the laundry worked really well.  We went up there, showered, and then threw our laundry in the machine.  Hung out while it washed and took a trip back down to 2 Foot Adventures again to get some supplies.

The lady in there didn't recognize us now that we were clean and in our town clothes and her jaw literally dropped when she finally recognized us from earlier.  Guess that says it all about being in the wilderness for a little over 6 straight days.

We then went back up to get our laundry and hung it all up to dry on a fence, not realizing that there were clotheslines nearby.

Once dry, we got a ride down to Grumpy Bear's Retreat from Ghost who usually does trail angeling near scissors crossing.  Upon arrival, we made food our priority and each ordered a milkshake and a 16" pizza.  While waiting for food, others that we knew showed up including Jedi (finally), AB, and Tina Burina.  Tina has been here for a few days as she skipped up here from Walker Pass because of issues with her foot.  We found a scale and weighed ourselves.  We have doubts about its accuracy and believe it to be off.  If it's off by the amount we think, I'm down 6 pounds since the start (which seems right based on how my pants fit), despite stuffing my face at every opportunity.  When our food arrived, I ate the whole damn pizza and although it was an accomplishment, I felt pretty bad afterwards for a few hours.

Went over to Triple Crown Outfitters (owned by trail legend, Yogi) and picked up a few items including my bear can (to store food in): a requirement for the upcoming section of trail.  It weighs 2 pounds (a huge amount of extra weight to carry), but does function as a nice camp stool.

It began thundering off to the west and we wondered if we needed to set up our tents, but it looks like the storm is moving away from us (it never did storm).  Went back to Grumpy's and picked up my boxes that I had sent here.  One of them included my new pair of shoes which is great to have after 700 miles!

Honestly, the new/old comparison isn't as bad as some that I've seen out here, but I didn't realize how bad they'd gotten until I pulled out the new ones.  The only difference is that the new ones are a half size larger.

I hung out with AB, Jedi, Frank, Tina, and Recon, a hiker I just met.  After a bit, we went over to the restaurant and hung out there for the rest of the evening, chatting with each other and other hikers we knew.  It was a pretty impressive hiker trash party.  Finally, about 9:30 (way past hiker midnight), we all made our way back to the campsite, some stumbling from a few too many drinks.