AT day 41 – Pool party
June 18th 2018
Lamberts Meadow Shelter – Daleville (mile 729.2)
9.3 miles
Total miles: 746.1
I struggled to get to sleep. Pi and Salty were talking for ages and they weren’t using their indoor voices. Not that it would have mattered, sound travels so much when you’re camping. I was close to telling them to shut up at 10:30pm but it was their last night on the trail together so I put my headphones in instead.
I woke at 5:15am. 5 minutes before I had set my alarm for. It was still dark but it was also about a billion degrees so it was easy to get up. In reality it was definitely over 20°C. I packed up quickly and set off just before 6am. We wanted to get moving early because Short Shorts went into town and got a motel room. He said if we got there before checkout then we could go and use his room to have a shower.
He text in the morning to say he had a late checkout at noon, and there was a pool there. Yes. I hiked as fast as I could. I left before Salty and Pi and I was expecting them to pass me really quickly. I hoped they would pass me really quickly because I was sweeping the cobwebs. It took them a couple of hours but eventually they did pass. There were a couple of nice views across the valley, but mostly of course we were in the trees, passing a few giant boulders and climbing over some rocks.
I called my mum on the way across the ridge. One less task to do in town! I did 9.3 miles in 3.5 hours which wasn’t too bad, came out of the trail to a massive road, turned right and went straight to the gas station to get a Mountain Dew. I found Short Shorts in his motel room and Salty and Pi were already there. We took showers which felt so nice but putting on dirty smelly clothes again wasn’t that pleasant.
The idea was to eat and resupply and then continue to hike on a few miles. We decided to take a dip in the pool before going for food and it was so good. We floated around on inflatables and cooled down. The call of the Taco Bell was too much for the boys and we walked up the road. It was unbelievably hot. The sign on the road read 95°F. Of course in the sun it was hotter and it was more like 110°.
I had my first Taco Bell experience. Never go with short Shorts. He is a bad influence. I ordered one of everything off the dollar menu and a frozen Mountain Dew drink called a Baja Blast. This was a mistake. There was so much food. I managed 5 out of the 8 items I got and I felt thoroughly sick. The food was ok. Nothing special. Cheap. Filling. I’m sure I’ll be hungry again in half an hour.
We had to walk back to the motel. In the Taco Bell I was shivering in the air conditioning. Outside I was melting. Back at the motel we had a quick discussion about what we were going to do. It would be nice to stay here the night. No one took much convincing. We all decided to stay. It was just too hot to do anything else. It is the hottest day so far and well, why not! Bad Weather came in and he’s staying in our room too so we are only paying $12 each for the night. The owner of the motel didn’t care how many hikers are crammed into a room. He even gave out a keycard for each of us.
We decided to go to the supermarket to resupply. I was concerned that I would need to rush to the bathroom but it seems Taco Bell bungs you up and fruit is the thing that makes you poo very quickly.
Resupplying was as agonising experience as it always is. I bought a load of horrible food for the next couple of days, and then we went over to the goodwill shop and I bought a t-shirt to sleep in as opposed to my merino layers which are way too hot. It is a pretty awesome t-shirt. Pi and I were walking back and a guy offered us a ride. It was only half a mile away but we took the ride! He took us right to our door.
We did our laundry which was a luxury I wasn’t expecting, and then we got back in the pool for the rest of the afternoon. A couple of other hikers were in the pool, one of the British girls who had a hurt her foot and is basically hitching her way up the trail from one town to the next. There were so many other hikers around, most of them I didn’t recognise.
I decided to go back to the store at around 7:30pm. I had tried to eat my leftover Taco Bell but it was even more disgusting when it was cold. One thing was a Frito Burrito which is basically trail food, stuff that I ate on the PCT, and it was the saltiest thing I have ever eaten.
The sign was still showing 91° at 7:30pm. Too hot. I wondered around the supermarket for ages and I left with an apple, chocolate milk, popcorn to pop in the microwave and share with my roommates and some popcorn chicken. God only knows why I bought that! I was craving some meat I guess.
We sat outside our motel room, like the hiker trash that we are, drinking beer and eating the supermarket snacks. I was so happy that I hadn’t hiked this afternoon. After 12 days of feeling ill and hiking, today was the first snot free day I’ve had and it felt good to have a break.