Day Ninety Four

Today's miles: 0
Total miles: 1959

I admit that this is our second zero in Bend (almost our third, since our first day we only hiked three miles into town...) but it was well worth it. The weather was looking a little rainy today, too, so we decided waiting out the storm was as good of an excuse as any. Plus, all three of us still had to work on our resupply, something we didn't get a chance to take care of yesterday. Scooter promised us that she had lots of food to spare, and when we saw her garage, we realized she wasn't kidding. She and Boulder had originally planned to do the entire PCT, and had spent months dehydrating meals, collecting snacks and breakfasts, and boxing up everything to mail to themselves. When they left the trail after 1,000 miles, they still had 1,500 miles worth of food waiting at home. We gaped in astonishment as Scooter dragged out box after box full to the brim with everything a hiker could ever need or want: pastas, cous cous, granola bars, instant breakfast packets, Snickers bars, tuna packets, cookies, dehydrated meals, pop tarts, and on and on. We each filled our food bags with seven days worth of food for the next stretch and didn't even make a dent in the amount of food that was still left.
"Please, take as much as you want!" Scooter said.
I already had resupply boxes for the rest of Oregon and Washington made up at home, but Sunshine had been relying on hiker boxes to supply himself with food, and Treekiller had been buying groceries in town. The two of them picked up some USPS boxes from the post office and filled them with food to mail to themselves further down the trail.

While they worked on resupplies and watched a movie in Scooter's living room, I spent the afternoon trying to catch up on my blog. In the beginning of the trail I was vigilant about writing out (by hand) my own journal each night before bed, or during our afternoon siestas in the desert. But lately we have become stronger hikers, and fulfilling more miles each day, so my free time has significantly dwindled. Every moment of my day (often up to 13 hours) is filled with hiking, and when we get to camp each night the sun sets earlier and earlier, so sometimes I barely have time to make myself dinner and crawl into bed before passing out. I haven't been keeping up with my hand-written or my online journals, instead keeping short-hand notes to myself on my phone so I won't forget what happened each day. It was relieving to spend the afternoon catching up on almost a month's worth of hiking and put it in print.

Later in the evening we got a call from Sneaks, who had just arrived into town with Mudd and Dingo at Santiam Pass this morning. It was strange realizing that they had passed the 2,000 mile mark already, and that when we got back on trail we would be 60 miles behind them. They invited us out to a game of bowling and so we joined them downtown. We kept joking that they were "from the future" and asked about our upcoming miles. It was nice to have a semi-normal evening in town, acting like we were part of society again.