Day 29

May 7

Mile 429 - Mile 444

By morning a lot of the weather had passed and we started to get some views once we packed up and finished the teeny bit of climb we had left up to Mt Gleason.

The rest of our walk today was pretty much downhill down to the Acton KOA. We needed to hitch into Acton from the campground to pick up a resupply package we sent to ourselves.

The landscape was a bit barren down to the valley floor. We made great time and hiked alongside a few other hikers we met.

Sparrow, Croom, and Bender.

Once we got to the KOA we took advantage of the laundry and showers. 

Here you can see Sparrow and K.C. looking unlike hikers in cotton clothes we borrowed from the hiker boxes while we washed our laundry. K.C. decided to pack out the sweatshirt at the urging of many other hikers.

At one point a trail angel named Mary showed up with freshly baked brownies. Hikers from all over the camp immediately flocked over and we decimated the batch in no time. It was a really nice treat and the brownies were still warm from the oven.

Just as we were starting our preparations to leave, the sky became dark and rain and hail began to fall. After huddling under a tree for a few minutes we decided to wait and see if we could ride out the storm before heading out. The rain continued on and off for an hour or so and just as we got the courage to leave and were saying our final goodbyes the sky opened up again. We ran to an overhang on the porch of a building on the property and debated our next move. Serendipitously, the owners of the KOA saw us (and the other hikers we were huddled with) and invited to sleep inside of the building which was being renovated into a lounge and had just had the floors finished that afternoon. It was hard to pass up the offer of a night indoors out of the rain, so we moved our bags inside and settled in for the night. The next few hours before bed was spent just socializing and meeting some new hikers. We stayed up way past hiker midnight and slept soundly on the floor, glad to be out of the rain for night.