July 8:Flat, Flat, Flat

We started out with a little climb and descent, but after that our trail was pretty much flat as a board with the occasional small incline or decline. You'd think that this would be easy walking, and it is by most respects. But Mark kind of laughed at me when I told him how sore my legs were from so many miles of flat ground. I think I prefer to have some (gradual) uphills and downhills verses just the flat walking. For starters, it's much less boring, and at least it uses different muscles. The flatness hurts because it uses the same muscles in the same way for hours. No bueno.

We knew we had to stop at Old Station to resupply. It's right off the trail, but because we had gotten so many good deals at our previous grocery store, I think we bought too much food (plus we'd gotten some good meals in town), so we had tons of food left. Our resupply for two more days was only one snicker bar each!

There is a couple in Old Station that are awesome trail angels. We hadn't planned on staying at their house, but the curse of hiking with a group is that we get sucked in all the time. But it's been fun, so we stayed. The Heitman's cook meals for all the hikers at their house, and we got to take showers and do laundry as well. In the end we camped in their yard with the other 15 or so hikers who were there.

We are getting to see a bunch of hikers we hiked with awhile back...in the desert and the sierras...because of the fires. We had hiked all the way to Sierra City before hitching around, but a lot of people were jumping ahead at Donner Pass, 40-some miles before Sierra City. In some ways this is fun, but it has also put a huge group of hikers all back in the same spot on the trail when we had just started to spread out a bit.

SIDE NOTE: We lost our cell phone hitching a few days ago; it has been found and is being mailed back to us, but it was disconnected temporarily. So if you try to call and it says our number doesn't exist, that's why. Don't fret; it shall be hooked up again soon.

Total Miles:1377.7
Miles Today:23.5
Camp 72:The Heitmans- Old Station

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