Day 77 - Tuesday, July 13

Tenting at a VERY crowded campsite (mile 1270.3). Walked 19.3 miles today.

We left camp just before 6 and had a short descent to Bear Creek. Frank lost her handkerchief on the way so she was disappointed in that. Her ankle is hurting today too so that's doubily bad. We reached the creek and Frank gave some food to Phantom Dooker (who is actually thinking of taking that as her trail name) as well as an O ring for her water filter.

We then began a 3,000 foot climb back up to the ridge. It wasn't too bad and time passed fairly quickly. Frank spoke with Flavortown on the way and realized she's had a huge protein deficiency recently and that's one reason she feels bad. Flavortown gave her some protein powder and she instantly felt better.

We met a trail crew at the spring near the top of the climb and chatted with them and thanking them for their work. Frank and I then climbed to the lookout point and discusses our next moves.

We had been planning to go to Belden Resort which is on the trail but closed the day we'll get there (tomorrow), so we decided to hitch into Quincy for a resupply and meal that will take us farther up the trail before we have to do another resupply. We had 8 miles of mostly downhill to the highway.

About 4 miles in, we came across a couple who were doing trail magic right off trail. They fixed us burgers (Frank got a zucchini sandwich) and gave us Gatorade, chips, watermelon, and ice cream sandwiches. I hadn't realized how much I'd been craving one of those and man was it good. We covered the next few miles fairly quickly, getting to the road about 2:30 pm. We got a ride from a section hiker, Habenearo, who was shuttling cars with his friends. He took us to the grocery and we resupplied. He then took us to a local park so we could organize everything while he went to a different section of the trail.

We sorted everything out and then went to a pub for dinner. We had some really good mac and cheese and a salad, while watching the MLB All-Star Game. After dinner, we went to the road and got a hitch from one of the trail workers we had met earlier in the day. At the trailhead, we ran into SoHo and Lost and Found who had hitched to the wrong road and accidentally skipped 4.5 miles of trail. They were getting a ride back to the other road though. Ran into Mama who told us Jedi, AB, and Thin Mint were a day or so behind us.

We hiked to the first campsite, about 2 miles from the road and met Hueveos. Chatted with him and shortly after, Cutie turned up. After that, the floodgates opened and over the next two hours, 25-30 hikers rolled into this site designed for 5 tents. It was pretty chaotic, but it all worked out in the end. We fell asleep shortly after 10pm. Frank's ankle was still hurting her today, but hopefully the lower mileage today will help it.