If only we could walk a mere 9 miles every day!
We slept in, which is always a treat. Nick got up before I did and made a trip down to the lobby for some coffee; I eventually got up around 7:30 or so, but I could have stayed in bed all day again. We both joked about taking another zero (I was only half joking, I would have happily taken another day off to sleep).
By 8:00, we were ready for some food. We ventured out of the hotel and ended up at Hang 5, which was my first time outside the room since entering it two days ago (I don’t feel bad about this at all, no matter how much Nick makes fun of me). Breakfast was delicious, although their chocolate chip pancakes were not the best I’ve had (they were still good, though). Nick stopped at a hardware store for more fuel while I went back to the room to pack up.
After walking all the way back to the room, I was annoyed when my key didn’t work. This had happened to Nick yesterday - while the front desk person was happy to reset the programming for him, they had failed to ask for any sort of ID at all (so anyone could have gotten a key to our room). I didn’t want to walk all the way back down to the front desk to get my key reprogrammed, but sitting on the disgusting hallway carpet to wait for Nick also wasn’t high on my list.
I ended up going all the way back to the front desk (for real, the carpet wasn’t suitable for sitting on). Like yesterday, the woman didn’t ask for a name on the room or an ID or anything - she just reprogrammed my key, no questions asked. Good thing we are honest people.
We decided to get a late checkout (why not?), so I used the extra two hours to take a nap before we left at noon - I feel like I just can’t get enough sleep. When it was time to go, we called an Uber rather than hitch back to the trail, which was easy and painless. Our driver, Tonya, was great.
Since both of us still felt tired and since water isn’t as plentiful on this stretch, we decided to stop at Lowland Campground, which has restrooms, water, and bear boxes. Because we stopped hiking so early, we had the whole afternoon to relax, which ended up being a lot of fun. While it seems silly to not get in more miles, I’m very excited about getting in more sleep (maybe we should have taken another day off).
Along the trail:
Camp:
