Day 77: More Rest in SLT
Date: Tues 7/3
PCT Start Mile: NA
PCT End Mile: NA
PCT Mileage for Day: 0
Total PCT Mileage: 1090.0
The Highlights: food, movies, rest, and permethrin
Before coming to South Lake Tahoe, Shawn and I had kind of hemmed and hawed over how much time we wanted to spend here. Did we just want to take one zero and get back on the trail? Or take a longer break to celebrate Shawn’s birthday in an awesome lake town that would be having an amazing firework show for him?
It was somewhere in the days of mosquito misery through Yosemite that we made our decision – quite easily – for a longer break, and made a hotel reservation in SLT for three nights.
Some people push their way through the trail, rarely taking any zeros at all, while others stop in all of the towns, soaking up the trail town experiences as they go. While we haven’t stopped everywhere or made all the potential side trips you could make from the town, we have enjoyed stopping through many of the towns, as much for the short break and hot food as for the trail town culture, which we see as an integral part of the whole PCT experience.
You also tend to reconnect with hikers you haven’t seen awhile in town. In the wilderness, you could consistently be a few miles away from someone and have no idea. In town, everyone tends to gravitate toward the same areas – with cheap lodging, a grocery store, post office, good places to eat, etc. And this is where we all reunite.
So anyway, we are in South Lake Tahoe through the fifth, and it will be nice to enjoy Shawn’s birthday here and catch the Fourth of July festivities, as well.
Today was fairly uneventful though – the way a zero should be – and barely blog worthy, but here are the cliff notes…
We started our day with breakfast at the Driftwood Cafe. My huevos-rancheros-esque meal was actually too big for me to finish. Bravo, Driftwood. I also drank a lot of coffee. Mmmmm…. coffee…
After breakfast, we went across the the street and bought permethrin and picaridin bug sprays. Seriously prepping for our return to the wilderness. Back at the hotel, we took our clothes, packs, and tent outside and soaked them in permethrin. If mosquitos land on me, I will be very upset.
Once all of our -ish was dry, we went back up toward the village to the cinema. This is what the movie theater is called in a fancy place like a ski village. If you want a good laugh, watch comedian Brian Reagan’s skit about people who call it the “cinema”.
Anyway, Shawn had been waiting forever for Sicario: Day of the Soldado to come out. So, here we were. Drug cartels, kidnappings, ambushes, guns… everything a guy could want in a movie. I was mostly there for the popcorn, which we demolished. Movie was okay though.
I can’t even remember what we did in the afternoon, must have been nothing. Glorious nothing.
In the evening, we were on the hunt for food again. Which meant we were on the hunt for scooters. We wanted Thai food, which was 1.5 miles away. 1.5 miles we didn’t want to walk. No extra credit for town miles. Our scooter search did not go well. We found one that worked and two that had no juice. Ugh. We walked.
That’s Shawn’s conscious over his left shoulder, telling him to get Thai iced tea instead of beer.
The Thai food was delicious and we washed it all down with refreshing Thai iced teas. Then we walked back to the hotel, unable to locate any nearby scooters or bikes. Womp, womp. Definitely getting busier for the Fourth… tomorrow will be a zoo! We hid inside our room the rest of the night and watched more movies. Restful day.
