PCT Days 15 & 16

I tried to sleep in yesterday, but was wide awake by 8:15. I was restless in my sleep because my motel door opens to the back door of a bar in the same parking lot.. and, well, Friday nights and all that. Surprisingly at 8:15am people were still loud as hell outside my door, but I don’t think that’s what woke me up.

All my clothes were dirty, so I put on my rain pants and puffy jacket and walked across the street to that same bar-that’s a cafe during the day. I had a mimosa and a breakfast burrito.. and was no longer mad at their late night patrons. It was delicious!

I went back to my room to gather my clothes, and had the pleasure of putting on dirty socks to walk in my crocs with.. the plastic makes blisters on the top of my feet if I walk too far in them, and the nicer laundromat (that doesn’t eat your money per reviews) was a mile away on foot. Dirty socks and crocs and in rain pants and a hot jacket, I trudged to the laundromat. Thankfully it wasn’t too hot outside yet.. but it was gonna get there.

I washed my clothes and while they were in the dryer I carefully (sockfree now) walked across the plaza to a thrift store. I decided I needed to have an oversized comfy tshirt for town days and maybe to sleep in. The sun protection long sleeve shirt I hike in is fantastic while hiking, but very annoying when I’m not in hiker mode. I found a nice army brown shirt that fit the bill for a whole $4 and walked back to get my clothes. I changed into my clean undies, shorts, sports bra, and my “new” shirt in the bathroom, slipped into clean socks and headed back to my room.

I was able to get a Lyft into town to the hyped up used gear store. Apparently they only have like one or two drivers for the whole city. This guy was a cutie and told me someday someone is going to walk into my life and open the door of my heart that I had no idea needed opening, and when that happened, I’d know that was the man meant to love me for life. I didn’t tell him this, but I’m pretty sure any doors on my heart are currently padlocked and have trip wire leading up to them. Haha

I was able to get gently used poles from the gear shop. From there I walked around downtown. There was an arts festival going on and I got some pretty gorgeous earrings (couldn’t help myself, support local artists and all that). I walked into shops and stores looking for sunglasses, because mine snapped in my pack when I unsafely tucked them away during my week of thunderstorms. One of the stores was having some kind of celebration thing happening, so I got to taste test wine, some yummy snacks, and they gave me a free “Ashland, Oregon” sticker. Neato!

I moseyed and walked the whole Main Street, walking into almost every store open. I checked out antiques, I looked at books, I saw paintings and people playing in a cute park. Then, like the old lady I am, I went into a sushi place at 5:15pm for dinner LOL! Whatever, I was hungry and had nothing else to delay me from eating. Y’all. I destroyed that sushi! And the red wine was on point, too! Budget smudget-plans keep changing and things have been rough.. that early dinner gave me life!

As I walked back through town towards my hotel, I saw two weary souls with slumped shoulders and backpacks sitting on a bench. Thruhikers! I waited for the man to get off his phone, he was arranging somewhere for them to sleep tonight.. and then I started chatting them up! They are a couple from New York that already hiked the whole desert section, jumped up to Truckee thinking they’d skip the Sierras and have better luck there, only to have to bail because of the never ending snow. Now, they were here.

We chatted for a long time, then walked and talked on the way to their hotel.. which was on the way to mine. They’re heading north today (sunday) from where I’ll start north from tomorrow. I had already decided early on Saturday that I was waiting til Monday to hike out. I could have shipped stuff saturday from the UPS store, but then I would have had to complete my grocery store chores and everything else-and my toes needed to heal up a bit more. Basically, I just didn’t want to.

We swapped numbers and I said my byes, silently praying they single-handedly remove all of the snow from my path from here to Washington. Lol! I made me back to my room and worked on the blog, watched SVU, relaxed. I ended up taking a shower at like 1am because I was wide awake. That hot water soothed me enough to let me fall right to sleep after I got out.

And then, today. Today I slept until almost 11am. No shame. It was great! Across the street apparently serves breakfast til 2pm, so I had biscuits and gravy topped with two fried eggs a little after noon. I went to the Bi-Mart, which is more like a Walmart.. I got new headphones (broke mine lol, I’m doing so great), and some of my groceries, then went next door for every thing else.

I had big plans of walking back downtown and maybe catching The Little Mermaid or something, but then just decided to lay around, rest my legs, and stalk the Facebook PCT groups for intel. My plan may be to hike to Fish Lake and then get a ride to Medford, Oregon.. send out some resupply boxes, then fly up to Seattle, get a ride to the trail head to the Northern Terminus (Aka to the Canadian border) and hike south from there.. I’m so torn.

Washington apparently had a normal to low snow year, unlike Oregon and California. And apparently, according to these FB angels up there the trail will be “mostly snow free” two weeks from June 2nd.. hmmmmm. It’s a tough call. Who’s to say I don’t spend all this money and make all this effort to get up there just to be in the same situation here. And if I continue past Fish Lake, to Crater Lake (with definite snow) then decide to jump up to Washington, then it’s a longer ride into an airport and therefore more difficult to make happen.

Bleh. So stressful. I’ve packed and organized all of my stuff.. except my tent, splayed out drying in the corner. I’m still watching SVU (gotta love USA network for these marathons), and I’ve got plans to get picked up at 10am by Stephanie, the trail Angel that brought me here. I’ll go ship my food box to Fish Lake at the UPS store before she gets here. I’ve already showered again, and my legs are itchy as hell.. so maybe I’ll get some shut eye soon and get to forget about all my healing scrapes. I’m hoping it’ll take me 4 days or less to get to Fish Lake.. and there’s quite a few hikers ahead of me now, according to the trail angel. Maybe from here it’ll be better. Fingers crossed I can start moving forward without all of the delays 🙂 Goodnight, y’all.