Figure 8:

Daddie Gizmo and I were on the same page this morning. I didn’t sleep great and wasn’t in the mood to run around all morning and then hitch to town. When I mentioned staying one more night in town so that we could do everything leisurely, DG didn’t hesitate to agree.  Great 😊 First thing, we solved the sleeping pad situation. We still couldn’t find the leak today after multiple tedious attempts including when DG submerged the pad in water today to check for air bubbles. Fortunately, we bought it at REI who overnight shipped us a new one that we will get here tomorrow. Phew! The gear shops here didn’t have any 25″ pads to replace the one we had.  In the meantime, we will ship the broken one back for a refund. Good old REI.  We really took our time walking up and down and then up and again through the three blocks of town that make up Lone Pine and checking out all the stores and price comparing items that we needed.

Food for the next leg. The essentials: beef jerky, cliff bars, boil in a bag rice, instant mashed potatoes. And of course tortillas!

A little perspective on this bear can

We had the whole day and were in no rush.  It’s always nice to walk a little slower in town than we do on the trail.  Lone Pine is a big hiking and climbing town because of it’s easy access to Mt Whitney. Many hikers use this part of the trail to climb Mt Whitney and then head back on trail, but we are focusing on the task at hand – Sierras. We know we are going to leave town tomorrow afternoon after getting our package, but given how freaking hot it is today we don’t think we are even going to start hiking until 5pm.  It’s supposed to be even warmer tomorrow.  We want to go about five miles  which is approx 3k feet straight up with fresh heavy packs. We have 7 days of food which is honestly going to suck when we put our packs on tomorrow. It’s worth it though.  Probably more food than we need but we need to have extra food now in case we need to turn back for a snow storm or creek we can’t cross because the water is too high. You also burn through a lot more calories staying warm in cooler temperature and are guaranteed to be hungrier.  I ran into Dustin who was at the bar last night while I was walking to get a deck of cards. He said there is a group of 20 hikers at his hotel getting a ride to Ashland, Oregon tomorrow. Their plan is to go South from there and hit the Sierras with less snow.  Lots of different plans going on with the insane amount of snow this year. Our motel neighbor said he and his group have a similar plan to ours. Head out into the wilderness and keep going until it feels too dangerous. We are still full speed ahead and hitting that snow tomorrow. We utilized the all you can eat salad bar at Pizza Factory for a late lunch at 3p.  We played some cards, watched a terrible movie and curled up in the air conditioning to get a good nights sleep to get the rest we will need to climb that mountain tomorrow. 💜

PS – 6 years ago today is when Daddie Gizmo and I met ♥️‼️