Day 59- June 17th

I walk into a room and saw an old friend from Hawaii I haven't seen for a long time.

"Kainoa! How have you been?" 

He replies, telling me all about his life the last few years. His voice starts to trail off and soon I can just here sniffling and crying with shallow short breaths.

"Hey man, are you crying?"

Suddenly I woke up in the tent. It was just a dream but the crying was real. Claire was sitting up in her sleeping bag and I asked her what's wrong. In between sobs she told me that her toe is throbbing and her whole leg hurts severely. Claire's not the type of girl to cry over a little pain, so I knew it was serious.

In the morning we looked at it and it was definitely a little infected. Claire had pulled a tiny hangnail about 4 days ago. The area became inflamed and irritated, but nothing more than usual. She wrapped it with gauze and tape to keep it clean. It had been fine up until tonight, so we're definitely gonna be keeping an eye on it.

We got to sleep in a little bit because we had camped under a tree blocking the rising sun in the east. We left about 9am, knowing we had under 5 miles to get to Kennedy Meadows.

Soon we passed a great milestone, 700 miles! This means we're over a 1/4 of the way done with the trail! It's a little crazy but also a little sad. Time has been in a weird warp where it feels like we've been here forever but also like we just started the trail last week!

We had some nice and exciting views as we were coming up to Kennedy Meadows, and we also went through a very densely thickened stream bed and a few cattle boundaries.

We made it to the paved road and took a right 0.7 miles to the famous Kennedy Meadows General Store. When we were walking up we got a big applause from all the hikers on the huge porch! It was a welcome to be remembered, we'd officially conquered the desert and are heading into the endless beauty of the Sierra!

We saw soooooo many people we know, too many to even name. But surprisingly, I still didn't know most of the people there! We caught up with Metro and BJ for a minute and then headed inside to pick up our packages. 

The place was SLAMMED! We went in and wrote our names on a paper list so they could look for our boxes. The lady at the cash register told us to come back in a bit. We headed back out onto the porch and placed an order for some burgers at the grill connected to the store. The cashier had suggested that if we wanted to get a burger, we'd better get on the list. 

Minutes later, we knew first hand what all the fuss was about! We both had double cheeseburgers. Mine was the special of the day called "Pineapple Express", with pineapple, onions, and BBQ sauce. One of the best burgers I ever had!! 

After a celebratory beer and polishing off the burgers, we went back in to check on the package-finding. There were 7 packages total and there was a $6 holding few for each! That's the quickest $42 dollars we ever spent!

Going back outside we picked an empty spot on one of the tables on the porch and opened everything. More goodies from Claire's mom Dona, yummy! We also got our bear canister that we packed in Portland which contained a bunch of food and our micro spikes, as well as the paper map and Yogi's guidebook pages for the Sierra up until South Lake Tahoe. 

We also got Claire's new pad from REI, Claire's new hiking poles from Hiker Hunger, a shirt that she had ordered online, and the box we sent ahead from Mojave with the stove, some cook food, and our extra layers like a beanie and gloves.

Looking over all of our food, we realized something. We had waaaay to much.. That's definitely not the worst problem as hikers we suppose, but it's a problem nonetheless when you have twice as much food as can fit in the bear canister. 

Also, after hiking 700 miles, we had a new, more accurate sense of what 9 days of food for us each looks like, and since a bear can usually only fits 5 days of food for one person.. Well, you can do the math. We needed another bear canister. I definitely didn't have an extra bear can in the budget, but luckily it was only $65 here and they're normally $80! 

Here is my food box in a medium size priority mail box for reference, WITHOUT any of the sealed and packaged dehydrated cook food we're taking!

And here is the bear box with the same food!

Now came the hard part: getting the dang canister into the backpack! The canisters almost take up the whole inside of the bag, and they're such a hard, oddly shaped item that it makes it difficult for anything else to also be in the bag. We ended up stuffing all our clothes around the darn thing just to make everything fit! Somehow, magically, we both got our packs shut! 

After we packed everything away, we decided a reward was necessary! Claire ordered another double cheeseburger and I ordered 2 huge chili cheese dogs! That's two whole meals in less than 5 hours! 

A few minutes after the end of round 2, someone pulled up in a big silver truck and asked if anyone wanted to go the the Grumpy Bear. The Grumpy Bear is a restaurant 2.7 miles down the road and they are supposedly the only place with wi-fi in Kennedy Meadows. We said we'd like to go and jumped in the truck with a few other hikers. As we were about to pull away, the driver told us, "Alright guys, you need to order dinner in order to use the wi-fi." Well, it looks like we're eating again!

We enjoyed a nice little truck ride and pulled up the Grumpy Bear still super stuffed. We went in and ordered two chocolate milkshakes and a cheese fries to split. We figured that'd buy us some wi-fi. The wi-fi was suuuuuuper slow, like painfully slow, but I was able to find a few things online I needed, including the updated Sierra snowpack information.

Unfortunately the signal wasn't strong enough to upload any of my blog! :( The last time I got to post was in Lake Isabella at the KOA four days ago! You guys might not be reading any of this for 8 or 9 days until we get into Lone Pine! :( I'm still writing every night, just can't upload, prepare for two weeks at once!

We closed out our tabs and soon the same person popped his head in and called around for a ride back. We jumped in the truck and enjoyed yet another pleasant ride.

The second we got back we got invited by a trail angel named John to come to his house with some other hikers and get showered up. Since we hadn't even set up out tent yet and it was almost 7pm, he pointed out where he lived and we said we'd stop by later.

We went out behind the store into the  huge area where PCT hikers are allowed to camp. It's a cool junkyard area with a lot of old antique junk like old gas pumps and all sorts of cool stuff.

Ready for a shower, we walked back to the road and tried to figure out how to get to John's house. We could see his house from the road far in the distance but had no idea how to get there. We followed some hiker prints into a series of confusing dirt roads and properties. Eventually we jumped over some bushes into an old dirt wash that seemed to head to the house. It was such a mission!

As we got closer two dogs started barking at us and running towards us! I braced myself for a possible bite but they were super playful and just ran around us barking and jumping. We saw someone up in the window signaling us to come up. Whew! It WAS the right house, what a relief!

Lucy, another hiker from Czech Republic met us downstairs and showed us up to the main room. This place was amazing! It was a really cool cabin style house with 4 levels. The other hikers already there were Makeshift and Helen Keller, Lucy and Rocksteady, and another couple. 

John was jamming on the guitar and Justin, the one who was cooking our delicious burgers earlier, was playing the drum kit! Connor, a teenager who was working as the cashier at the grill at the store, and his Grandpa Stan were also there.

It was a good get-together and everyone got to shower and enjoy a few beers while rocking out on some instruments. John could really play!

Claire and I headed back before the rest because by 11pm we were falling asleep in our chairs. On the way back we ran into HR on the road and we "guided" him back to the campground. There was still music playing through the speakers on the patio of the general store, so we sobered him up a little bit with some food from the hiker boxes and helped him find his lot slipper for a good 20 minutes! 

How'd it get under there?

There was a gigantic teepee with a fire in the middle and we peaked in for a moment before retiring to our tents for the night. 

It was definitely a long day. It's hard to believe that we actually hiked almost 5 miles earlier this morning. Tomorrow we'll sleep in a little bit, probably get a little breakfast at Grumpy Bear, and then hike out a few miles if Claire's toe seem ok.

-Thanks for reading!