Day 5- BFT
Town Day! These days are like mini holidays scattered throughout a thru hike. It’s so exciting getting to fulfill dreams of ice cream and burgers and kombucha and coke. Today molly and I had all of that and more as we splurged for our final day together before I venture on alone.
We woke up in our campground groggy and sleepy,but motivated by town day to get up and get going. We only had a few miles of real trail with a lot of road walking to get to town. The trails were basically short cuts heading steep uphill without any switchbacks making it seem again that we were climbing walls. It’s gotten really dry again and seems to be venturing away from the lush wet side of the Trinity mountains.
Town was extremely exciting. Molly and I bought a drink, ate a late lunch at a Mexican restaurant and after cleaning up went back out to eat a burger and enjoy Hayfork. This is one of my favorite trail towns I have come across and I wish I would have planned to spend an entire day here with nothing else to do. Everyone is kind and welcoming and full of smiles. I’m looking forward to what’s ahead, but sad to be going on alone without Molly. By the way, did I mention she rolled her ankle at mile two and had a gnarly swollen ankle all the way through? A lot of the past four days have been about getting our feet in water to try and ice Molly’s ankle and sleeping in a way to elevate it through the night. I can’t believe she pressed on for 70 miles in that condition. Badass. Wishing she could join me for the rest, but we have a big move coming up and a lot to get done. So tomorrow it’s just me again romping through the forest.
