Day Nine

Today's miles: 5
Total miles: 115

Since we camped so close to Warner Springs, we didn't need to get up early to hike. This was fortuitous, since I was sleeping so hard that I slept through all my alarms, anyway. We woke up to Papa Bear leaving camp and joking to us, "Canada won't come to you, ladies!"

We had a lazy breakfast in camp and walked into Warner Springs at 8am. Though the town is small, there is a community center where locals set up a hiker stop and take donations for the FFA. We stopped for laundry, showers, and to pick up our first mail drop of food. (Although we've been eating less than expected, so now we have too much). Plus, the ladies running the resource center made us breakfast and had a little resupply shop open to buy goodies.

Happy Hour enjoying a foot soak

We spent time with old and new hiker friends: Papa Bear, Jesse, Tumbleweed, Games, Nate, Wocka, Giddyup, Pickles, Irish, Andrew, Hitch, Happy Hour, and Tony. We spent so much time teasing Tony about his Canadian accent that we came up with a trail name for him: Oot and Aboot. Katie and I should go into business giving trail names! We don't have any ourselves yet, though I told Katie we need to name her something about her feet. She's the only one we've met so far who doesn't have any blisters or foot problems. Name suggestions included: Hermes, Superfeet, or Happy Feet. We'll see what happens.

At 4:30 we hiked on, but only made it five miles before stopping for the night. We camped with Oot and Aboot near a low running stream and had a dinner buffet sharing all the new food we had just gotten.