Sierra City

Day 79, Mile 1197

This last section I have been trying to make some miles and stay on task to meet up with family. Besides Gator, it has been a while since I have seen the familiar face of someone I haven't met hiking. So it will be such a great morale booster for being close to the halfway point. Hmmmm, I have hiked almost 1200 miles and I am still over 100 miles short of the halfway point. But technically I am in Northern California now and looking forward to Oregon and Washington.

Gator and I ended up hiking about 100 miles in 5 days which is a pretty good pace for us. I am hoping to continue that pace since we are now through the hard part of the Sierra's. But so many unexpected things come up on the trail that it is hard sometimes to keep a steady pace. The other day I was hiking down from some rocky switchbacks by Donner Pass at the end of the day and ready to be done even though we still were going to try and hike another couple miles before setting up camp when I heard Train shout "trail magic"! Right then I knew we were not going any farther that night. Ok so Train is our friend we met in Big Bear and have been hanging out with on and off and trail magic is when you get something wonderfully unexpected on the trail. This time it was a neat couple from Tennesse that did the Appalachian Trail last year and wanted to pay forward some of the trail magic they got hiking. So they had come across the country in their camper and parked there at Donner Pass to make hot meals and offer rides or whatever else they could do to help out the hikers. Wow! It was great! So there was a handfull of hikers just sitting around a camper at Donner pass telling thier stories while listening to Frost (another hiker we know) play the Ukulele. How could anyone pass that up?

Sorry about spelling, spell checker wasn't working.