Distance hiked today: 3.4 miles / 21.6 km.
I was up early and packed up, ready to head to the bakery 2 miles away. I started walking with Runner and Slim whom I hitched in with yesterday. The road follows the edge of the lake and it was nice and peaceful in the morning, but I still wasn't thrilled about a 2 mile off-trail walk before breakfast. I stuck my thumb out as a truck came by and he picked us up. He even had 2 chairs in the box to sit on - small town things.
The bakery was super nice, and to my surprise and *extreme* delight they had 2 different kinds of low carb baking - a peanut butter chocolate pie, and a fluffy roll cake with raspberry compote. I haven't seen this the whole trail, especially in small towns. Ah.ma.zing. I had a slice of each, and a bowl of kale salad which was also phenomenal, and then got some to go. So basically all I ate today was cake, salad, and coffee, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I caught the bus back to the main town area, and got to work on laundry and showering. I combined loads with Runner, Slim, and Two-Mile, who fell into the lake as we were pre-washing our socks in the water 😂. Then Runner exploded the Tide Pod before we could put our clothes in the machine. Chaos.
I got my resupply box from the postman, and the laundry was done 5 minutes before the 1pm bus that I needed to catch back to the trail.
Back on trail, I crossed a couple of wobbly suspension bridges, and saw 2 bears! The first ones I've seen the whole trail. The first was very young, eating Saskatoon berries below the trail, and couldn't care less that I was there. The second was right at the junction to my campsite, I saw a big black bear come out of the thick bush about 40 feet away and start walking down the trail away from me. I made noise but it didn't even look back or twitch an ear, its shiny black fur rippled across its back as it walked.
It sprinkled a bit, and I got drenched by the bushes again from the waist down, as if I'd just walked through a river. I camped alone, but chose a spot with a bear box since the forest is packed with bears around here.
Total trail mileage: 2586.3 miles / 4161.4 km