Day 11 – 9/4/19

Zero in McDermitt / 198 miles total

I thought a zero in McDermitt sounded like a great idea until I was actually in McDermitt. By this morning, I was very much ready to leave. But, we are stuck waiting on our filters to arrive. We had hope the USPS was just sandbagging and they’d actually get delivered today, but no such luck.

We ended up making 4 trips to the Say When Casino to eat breakfast, lunch, afternoon ice cream sundaes and drinks, and supper. Clean plates every meal and we also had some snacks from the gas station. Hiker hunger has already kicked in on this hike. Bonus, the waitress asked us if we’d just come from Burning Man.

I spent a while in the library, which was surprisingly very nice and had WiFi and computers. I worked on some website problems, and took care of some logistics. Our motel advertised itself as offering WiFi, but it didn’t work. The gentleman running the place did try to fix it, and ended up discovering the internet bill hadn’t paid and service was shut off. It got restored, but the WiFi never did reach our room.

Big shout out and endless thanks and praise to our good friends Action Pack and Butterbeans, who are house/pet sitting for us while we’re gone. They also got stuck with the duty of mailing our resupply boxes and replacement gear, which has already been a lot, and we’re only 11 days in. Thank you!!

We also bought a 750 piece jigsaw puzzle featuring cats sunbathing and building sandcastles on the beach for $1 at the library, intending to pass the evening puzzling in our motel room. But then we discovered we could watch the first episode of the new season of The Great British Bake Off on my phone and there went our productivity.