August 9th
The events of the previous day were mentally as well as physically draining. Exhausted, we slept in later than expected. We catch the bus to downtown and have breakfast at Gepettos. We meet Nazgul, another thru hiker. He has taken some time off from the trail and has jumped ahead to catch up with some other hikers who are due to arrive in another day or two. At the outfitters they accept the returned shoes and I exchange them for a pair of Asolo Axis, a trail running shoe hopefully more suited to my feet. I also try a pair of “superfeet” insoles and find that I like the feel of the shoe much better with them.
The Carrot was not happy with her shoes either. It was a sizing problem, not a defect. She probably could have “lived” with it, but would have been uncomfortable. Since we are back in town anyway we go to the other outfitter where she bought her shoes and she gets a different pair. Since the problem was not with the shoe but with her choice she is unable to get a refund. We leave her first pair of shoes at a used sporting goods store to sell on consignment. All this takes longer than we had hoped and by the time we get a bus back to the hotel and start out of town it is almost 1pm.
We wait in front of a Chevron station for 25 minutes with no luck until someone waves to us from the island where he is pumping gas. He recognizes that we are hikers and offers to take us to the trailhead. As we are waiting for his gas to be pumped a pickup truck which had passed us earlier pulls in. He had turned around and come back to give us a ride. Now we have more rides than we need and have to turn away the pick up truck. Our ride, Randy Warner offers the use of his cabin on Hyatt Lake, although we hope to make many more miles than that before night.
At the Route 66 trailhead we came across Strut, Train Wreck and Tigger napping after lunch. Something seemed amiss during our visit in Ashland – it was the first time since Walker Pass, 1,200 miles back that we had been in town and not seen Strut. Although they were in Ashland at the same time as us, it is such a large town we never came across them. Now, back on the trail it is a small world again. We visited with them, and finally are all hiking at 2:45pm.
We all stopped for a swim at Little Hyatt Reservoir, leaning across the top of the dam for photos and enjoying the warm waters of this small and shallow lake. We hiked on to Hyatt Lake and we all made dinner at picnic tables near the maintenance building. After dinner we hiked another hour and 20 minutes to a low peak and camped there, with the three gals about a half mile back. We did not get in as many miles as we would have liked, in fact our return to Ashland has cost us the equivalent of a half day or more, but we are back on track.
It is getting noticeably darker earlier, and we need to be finding a campsite by 8:45pm now. It’s a clear night with almost no mossies so we sleep without the tent. Several times we hear the sounds of limbs snapping on the ground, as if a large animal is grazing nearby. Whatever it is, cow, deer, bear it doesn’t show itself and so we watch the stars awhile before going to sleep.
