Euphoria, luxury and restlessness - June 26

Three adjectives that accurately describe my experience of town stops. After 5 or 6 days on trail, no matter how beautiful it all is, you really look forward to getting to town. Having a shower is the most awesome experience ever. The dirt you see on the floor of the tub makes you feel both proud and a little disgusted. You earned that dirt, but dang are you dirty. The one thing that MAY precede a shower is food. Whatever is closest normally. Most recently it was a Subway, and in the the 24 hours we were in Independence, I ate 3.5 feet worth of Subway sandwiches. Maybe next time I'll make an effort to eat my height in Subway sandwiches, that would be a decent challenge. Once those two needs are met, it's time for business. Resupply from either a store or a Post Office. Luckily this time around we mailed a FULL resupply from Bakersfield, so we didn't have to worry at all about shopping for groceries. We'll also seek out a place to do laundry. Once all that's achieved, all that's left is to relax. I don't like that. I get restless. Sleeping in a hotel, motel or even hostel is almost uncomfortable. Sleeping on a bed feels weird and before the first night in town is spent, I'm ready to be back on the trail.

We got into Independence by about 11:20AM on Sunday. We had to hike 9 miles of a side trail with a pretty decent little pass (Kearsarge) in the middle to get to the Onion Valley trailhead, a dead end road at a parking lot of a campground and the start of the trail. It can be a tough hitch because there's just not much traffic, but luckily for us there were two trail angels (UberBitch and Bristlecone) that were there with food, drinks and rides to Independence. We had last seen these two awesome people back at the Saufley's. We had a nice chat with UberBitch and Bristlecone gave us a ride to REI. You help pay the gas of course, but without people like this, logistics would be much more difficult. We enjoyed some pancakes and then Bristlecone gave us and another couple a lift to town. The top of the pass is at 11700 feet and town is around 4000 feet. It's much warmer and you kind of feel like you're back in the desert.

We tried to get as much done as we could in Independence. Laundry, showers and binging. It was Sunday so we couldn't get our package in the mail until the next morning, so we stayed at the Courthouse motel, $60 cash, and pretty decent. I asked the owner if he knew of a place where I could get my Mohawk touched up, but obviously there was nothing. As I had hoped, he offered to let us borrow a hair shaver kit and Julia did a beauty job. I trimmed my mustache in the mirror. First time ever! That's when I already started getting antsy to get back out there! We were taking a zero day in Lone Pine, so I needed to figure out how to chill out. I ended up watching 3 movies and falling asleep.

Monday morning I went over and got a breakfast sub and let Julia sleep in. She hadn't slept well as she had a bit of a tummy ache, probably on account of the altitude change. We got packed up and I ran over to the Post Office and got our boxes. There I ran into Flatlander. They had gotten into Independence later than us the previius day and hitched right over to Lone Pine. I told him we were on our way over too and that we'd get a hold of them once we find a place and get settled. The hitch for us took about 20 minutes or so. Finally a nice firefighter man picked us up. He was on his way 3 hours past Lone Pine but had to go through. He dropped us off right at the Best Western. Despite the fact that it was about a kilometer from everything else, we decided to stay. Julia's birthday had just passed and she deserved a little luxury. All they had was a room with two queen sized beds. It was pricey, but the nice lady gave us the AAA rate. Julia also mentioned that it was our honeymoon and we ended up scoring a bottle of wine! We dropped our stuff off and headed into town to meet the others and do some shopping at the outfitter. We had a list of stuff, but only managed to get a couple items. It was a pretty tiny store. We had lunch with Team Tokyo at the Mt. Whitney Restaurant. It wasn't half bad!! After lunch we went back to our room to sort out or food and repack it all. We planned to meet up again for dinner. I secretly knew that Team Tokyo wanted to take us out for dinner for Julia's birthday. We had Mexican. Pretty tasty and super filling! Good times with great people. After dinner we waddled home and passed out, only to wake up early this morning and gorge ourselves at the complimentary buffet. We met the others at the bus stop for 8:30 and got back to Independence where we hitched (they got a ride in 5 minutes and we waited another 30 after that) back up to the trail. Ahhhh, home again. Only a massive climb up to Kearsarge Pass faced us, then another 5ish back to the PCT. And here we are now, cowboy camping at 11,250ft and nestled in our sleeping bags. Taka is snoring a few yards from us, all is good.

Six days till Mammoth Lakes and a visit with Mom and Dad Lafleur!