Day 26 – 9/19/19

16.3 miles / 531.7 total

Yesterday I made arrangements with Thom who owns the local cycling and camping gear store to get a ride back to the trail early this afternoon, when the rain was forecast to be over.

So I had a nice leisurely morning of lounging in my motel room, over an hour of which was spent tearing the room apart in search of my missing ziploc of drink mixes (I did eventually find them). I came into town with so much leftover food I didn’t actually need to buy anything for my resupply. Win?

I did pick up a few gear items in town: a pack of vinyl hose washers because the gasket on my Sawyer started to deform and wants to leak, a cheap Energizer brand headlamp because my new for this year fancy rechargeable headlamp shorts out when I plug it in now, and a thermal top because it’s apparently winter now.

Within 20 minutes of being dropped off the skies opened and I got dumped on with a nice rain/sleet mix. Lovely.

The weather cycled between blue skies and brief periods of rain the rest of the day. I went through a lot of wardrobe changes what with the thermal top, poncho, rain mitts, and umbrella.

After the initial gravel/dirt road miles away from the highway I’m once again on the Fremont NRT. Portions of it are nice, and portions of it are giant mud pits overrun by cows.

But it is actual trail, and well maintained, not overgrown and hardly any blowdowns. Oh, and I have 4 bars of LTE from my campsite. Am I on the ODT???