Day 80 7-7-08

Slept great! Up at 0530, over here at the Best Western using their internet access because I can! They have a Deluxe Continental breakfast that is starting up in......on 2 minutes, so we are here and ready, I think they even have a waffle maker! I know they have tables and chairs and it looks fancy! We stayed at the hotel next door, but have access to everything here at Best Western! Can't beat that! Ok, Breakfast, then the PO at 0730 and then a ride to the trail and we are Northward bound. The terrain is different 138.2 miles north, more volcanic mountains, big trees, and flat walking! Hopefully we can make up some miles and we'll be out of California in about 400 miles! Wow! Really feels like we are getting somewhere now.............even if it did involve a ride up here! Have a great Monday........it's waffle time! :) The picture I just attatched is of us yesterday.......hanging around on our little patch of grass in Chester! Fun times!

Day 79 July 6, 2008

Had a good night's sleep inside a house! Woke up to Wasa cooking up a storm! He is quite the chef, he made gingerbread (I got the recipe it was so good!) Homemade biscuits, this egg souffle type of thing with zuchinni and all sorts of veggies in it and Carol made fruit salad! What a great morning! Wasa and Carol traded recipes like baseball cards and then we packed up and Chris gave us a ride up to Chester (which was quite the drive) Along the way, we saw road fire detour signs and more smoke. We dropped Wasa at the trail (cause he was ready to go) and ran into Ash, Roscoe, and Just Ben. Then Chris brought us to town and gave us the tour, we even checked out this ball field where it looked like it might be a nice place to camp for the evening! Thank you for everything Chris and Carol. Then we went to the supermarket (this was around 11am) and found a nice patch of shady grass to sit on for the next...........oh........5 hours! Slider, Thrust, Graybeard, JZ, Antfarm and Swiffer rolled in around 2pm, so there were a bunch of us........just hanging out and taking turns buying stuff in the store. Around 5pm, Slider and Graybeard went to check out the ballfield and found "no camping, no loitering" type of signs...........uh oh. Then.....Mark drove up and said, "are you guys PCT hikers? and do you need a ride to the trail?" Why......yes we are, and yes we will! We asked if he had somewhere we could camp for the night and he told us that he was the manager of the Best Western just down the street! Perrrrfect! There were 8 of us and we really didn't want to dish out tons of cash for a quick one night stay (we had already checked in town motel prices and they were PRICEY) So, Mark called up the hotel next to the Best Western (he manages that one too!) And struck us up a deal that we could not refuse! (and we had no where else to go at this point!) So, we all walked down there, got 2 rooms for the 8 of us and took showers and grabbed dinner at the Copper Kettle and then went back and went to BED! What a day! We were basically wasting the time until the PO opens at 0730 on Monday morning for our packages (maps, food, etc)