Distance hiked today: 27.5 miles / 44.2 km.
Today was cloudy and it sprinkled a bit on and off. Not enough to put a rain jacket on, but I still got soaked from the waist down from the bushes along the trail.
I was super hungry all day and have been eyeing the bushes for berries, now out of desperation rather than a treat. I only find one berry every half an hour or so, so it's not really helping. I also saw a strange coral-looking mushroom and debated if it was edible, but thought better of it.
I passed a 100 mile marker for southbounders - 100 miles left for me!
Giggles has a new strategy of eating from inside her bug net to avoid the black flies. Very effective.
I arrived at the road into Stehekin in the evening, a tiny town in the mountains on Chelan Lake, only accessible by boat, plane, or walking. Some vehicles have been ferried in, and there's a road that goes from the top of the river gorge where the trail is, all the way into town. They run bus shuttles up and down to bring hikers and tourists around since there's no traffic for hitchhiking. The last bus into town is at 5pm so I knew I'd miss it, and planned to go in on the morning bus. I had dinner by the ranger cabin and chatted with Stan, the volunteer ranger posted here who informed us of the high bear activity in this area. I think they've been eating all the berries. I had 2 tuna packets, a couple slices of meat and cheese, and whatever mayo I could scrape from the inside of the bottle with the handle of my spoon.
A single truck came up the road and I stuck my thumb out! The local man stopped to take 4 of us hikers to town. Score! He had benches in the truck canopy (potato quality picture as it was pretty dark). The store in town would already be closed, but at least I'd get food earlier in the morning. At this point all I had left was one bite of a protein bar, and 10 gummy bears (my low-blood-sugar stash). Cutting it close.
Giggles needs to resupply in the next town of Mazama 20 miles farther down the trail because there's nothing here unless you ship a box, so she continued on and we plan to meet up in a couple of days.
Total trail mileage: 2572.9 miles / 4139.8 km