Girl Gone WILD: Day 25: Chester to a bridge and friends

June 29
10 miles

We wake up late, and it takes me a good 20 minutes to deal w my feet.

**warning: gross foot portion**
My blister (yes, I know I keep talking about it!) has spread to a little over 2 inches long around my heel, 1 inch high. It's yellow and filled with pus. I decide to slice it open this morning because needles are doing nothing to drain it. I will not let this little bastard best me. In the knife goes, out comes pure terror.
**gross part over**

I slap some tape on my feet and boy do they feel so much better! After a week and a half of that thing plaguing my hike, it makes such a difference to even have slightly lessened the pain. Woot!

We head to the coffee shop for some Joe, and I just happen to mention to some guys sitting next to us that we're looking for a hitch to the trailhead--about 10 miles away. One guy says he'll take us, so we hop in his truck and off we go! Turns out that Frank helped create and maintain the PCT trails in the 70s!
He drops us off only to have another hiker emerge from the woods, wanting a ride back into Chester. Frank takes Shredder (the other hiker) and turns around for the return trip. What a guy!

We walk up the trail head and find Trail Magic! I can't believe our luck! Ramen, water, soda, potato chips and sour gummies! Hells yes.

Back on the trail and I'm practically FLYIN'! My feet still hurt, but it's minimal in comparison. It's amazing what a zero can do for you, physically and mentally. It's 19 miles to the Drakesbad Guest Ranch, where I've read that they have an all you can eat spaghetti dinner for $10. Shut up. I'm gonna eat all the food.

Because of my feet we decided to stretch this 50 mile portion out to five days. But 10 miles tends to go by fast. We finish our first ten by 2, despite getting on the trail around 11am. We're by a lovely river, under a bridge, so we decide to eat lunch and take naps.

Around 3:30, just as we're debating how many more miles to do, we see two hikers approaching the bridge. It's our German friend, REI (pronounced Rye), and another hiker we've met briefly, named Borealis. They come and sit with us, and suddenly we are all debating ending early for the day and just camping here! It doesn't take much for them to talk us into it, and soon we are all eating food and playing cards. Another hiker, Quiet Man, sets up camp, but he's so quiet I keep forgetting he's here!

REI makes what I've dubbed the Hiker Trash Burrito. Here's the recipe: a flour tortilla, topped with ketchup, cheeseits, salami, honey, string cheese, olive oil and peanut butter. Go forth and puke! :)

After food the four of us play hearts. We have to teach REI the game, but it turns out he's practically a professional card counter, so he swept the entire game in no time. We would have a full hand of cards, and he would look at all of us and say "well, I could take everything, but I would lose the Ace of hearts, and I know when, so I won't shoot the moon." I need to take this guy to Vegas. Stat.

None of us know what to do with ourselves, ending so early, so we just play cards till it's dark, cursing the Mosquitos and the "fucking little fuckers" (aka what we got REI to start calling the biting gnats) and having a blast with each other. We change Kacie's trail name from "Almost There" to "13", because she got stuck with the queen of spades 6 times, racking up 13 points each time. Lowest score wins. LOL

I am happy. In this moment, so content.

Quiet Man silently lurks in the dark. He's spooky.