The first part of today was 18 road miles to Whitehall.   Like the other day, I felt like I was simply out for a stroll on a beautiful country road. 

I arrived in Whitehall around 1 and went directly to the K Bar and Grill, where Nick was waiting for me.  He had already picked up the resupply package from the post office (obviously, we made it to town well before they closed at 4pm) and was on the patio, enjoying a beer.  

We spent over 2 hours at the K Bar, eating burgers, drinking lots of water, and sorting through the resupply.  The first thing I saw when I opened the box was a note from Mary - she sent us surprise treats!  Excellent. Surprise treats are the best. 

While we had hoped to spend the night in Whitehall, their one hotel was completely booked (apparently there is a concert going on somewhere).  We had put our names on a waitlist a few days ago, just in case someone cancelled, but by the time we were ready to start hiking again they still didn’t have any openings.  While a shower would have been nice (it’s pretty hot down here at the lower elevations), I was ok with hiking out.  

The second part of the day was another road walk, but this time it was 8.5 miles on a paved highway so it wasn’t as nice.  There was an OHV road next to the highway, though, so for 4 of those miles our feet got some relief (and we weren’t walking on the dangerous, barely there shoulder).  

After 5 miles on the highway, we hit 2000 miles!  I cannot believe we’ve come this far and yet still have so far to go.  We did the best we could with a picture.  

Our goal was to get to BLM land and camp there somewhere, but the issue was water - we weren’t sure where we were going to find any.  We were just about to take a bit of a detour (and add more miles to the day) when a woman (Colleen) with a dog drove up, slowed down, and started talking to us.  At first she just wanted to let us hear an oldies song about hiking playing on the radio (the song ended before I could identify which one it that was).  After the song ended I thought she would drive on.  She didn’t.  Instead, Colleen continued to drive slowly next to us as we walked down the road, chatting away about her dog, Molly, and all sorts of other things.  It was extremely entertaining and helped keep my mind off my poor feet, who had had enough of walking on the paved road.

We chatted until we got to the road we were going to detour down for water.  When we explained what we were doing, Colleen looked disappointed for a second (I thought maybe she was hoping to talk to us more).  Then she brightened and said that she had water in the back we could have.  We weren’t sure she’d have enough (we needed about 5 liters to get us through tonight and tomorrow morning), but she had a 5 gallon water container to share with us.  As we filled our bottles, she continued her steam of chatter.  She even had some beer, so of course Nick had one.  We spent about 30 minutes on the side of the road with Colleen as she jumped from one topic to the next - her chatty, friendly personality put us both in great moods.

After Nick finished his beer, we had to say goodbye- we still had a few miles to go before we crossed I-90 and got into BLM land and it was already after 7.  Those last few miles were the most difficult (they always are), but we made it.  As a bonus, there are pit toilets at this trailhead!  For dinner, we shared a convenient store sandwich we packed out along with the surprise brownies and muffins Mary sent.  (We ate a LOT at lunch).

We are under 5000 ft and I love how warm it is down here!!!  I don’t think I’ll need my quilt tonight, either.

Along the road:

Camp: