Yesterday ended up being an “easy” 25. – if there’s such thing as an easy 25 mile day. Upstream and Snap got to our campsite by 4:15, I arrived a half hour later, and Lightning McQueen was about 20 minutes behind me. Upstream thought it was too early to stop and wanted to go further, but that didn’t fly well with the rest of us. There were definitely daylight hours left for hiking, but my feet were shot. The callous I’ve had on the ball of my left foot for nearly 2 months now is starting to bother me. I will take a look at it this morning and see if I can figure out what’s up. I think it’s impossible to do this hike without dealing with some sort of foot issue on a regular basis, and I’m not particularly worried about this one. Just something to deal with before it gets worse.

The plan today is to walk 8 miles into JJ‘s Café in Old Station, and have a good second breakfast. There is a lava tube / tunnel a short distance away, and also just off the trail that we want to check out as well. After we do all that, we’ll walk another 15 or so to where we will camp for the night. That’ll leave us a shorter day into Burney Mountain Guest Ranch the next day, where we will likely spend the night.

As I said before, I like hiking alone, and I managed to hike alone the entire day yesterday, and it was fun. But, it’s also fun to hang out and eat together, talk about our days, and get to know each other a little bit better. I’m finding balance, which I’ve often struggled with in life, so it’s good. I was worried about being able to keep up with this group, but I’m doing OK so far on the miles, and my body seems to be holding up. At some point, I know we’ll go in separate directions, or at least at separate paces, but for now it’s been fun.

It’s nice to be walking in a green forest this morning after walking through burn zones most of the last few days. Hopefully, that means it will stay a little cooler today as the temperature rises. Yesterday was probably the most desert feeling day since I left the desert over a month ago. I can’t believe how far I’ve come, nor can I believe how much more there is to go. There’s about 320 miles left in California, then just under 500 in Oregon, and then just over (I think) 500 in Washington. There’s a lot to think about over the next few months, but as I’ve said before, I just need to take it day by day, and step-by-step.

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My alarm was set for just after 5, but we were awake before it went off. The tent was covered in dirt and mud from the rainstorm, and our things were a little wet.

We knew today was going to be a full marathon of walking, so we got ourselves together as quickly as we could and got on the trail.

We somehow managed to do over 3.5 miles in the first hour. This brought us into the town of Dalton, MA, and we stopped to get some coffee and breakfast at Juice and Java.

Today was already beginning to warm up, and the humidity was intense. We walked uphill for a bit to get out of town, and things began to even out nicely.

Our next stop, after some miles in the green tunnel, was to be just off of Washington Mountain Road. The Cookie Lady was a must-stop. This fantastic woman named Ruth runs a blueberry farm and also offers amenities for hikers. She greeted us immediately and handed us a couple of ice-cold mason jars of her homemade hibiscus cooler drink. We sat on the porch with her and chatted over cookies. She took over this farm a while back and loves taking care of hikers. She even has an airplane hangar that doubles as a bunk room for hikers to stay in.

It’s her birthday tomorrow, and she always makes a Thanksgiving-style dinner to share with hikers. Since we were planning to stay at Upper Goose Pond Cabin, we were told to bring blueberries from the Cookie Lady so the caretakers at the cabin could make blueberry pancakes. We didn’t have enough time to pick our blueberries since we still had eleven miles to go, so she gave us a pint on the house, and we, of course, made a donation to her. Nick stuffed these berries into his stove, and we were on our way.

Our final leg of the day was home for the evening. We’ve heard a lot of talk about this cabin, so we pushed a little extra hard to make it there.

The remainder of the day was hot and dragged on. We managed to arrive by 6 pm, and with the 0.5-mile side trail to get to the cabin, we officially hiked a marathon! Our feet were so tired, and all we wanted was a dip in the pond.

We met the caretakers and dropped off our blueberries; they were very excited. We made our way to the pond and cleansed ourselves of the dried sweat and mud we’d accumulated over the past day.

Eventually, we went back to the cabin to make dinner and talked to some of the other hikers. Some of them hiked with our friend Katie/Bugs before she sped up! One of the girls, Squeeze, even gave Katie her trail name. What a small trail it can be sometimes.

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Monday, July 28, 2025