Zero Miles Hiked!!!

I wake early and lay in bed as long as possible before getting up in search of coffee. I find it at the San Juan coffee house – yum coffee if you are ever in Lake City – and catch up on wifi things before heading back to the hostel with a birthday muffin in hand for Lindsay, a badass hiker staying at the hostel. Everyone has to have at least one little birthday surprise!

Our ride back to the pass is leaving earlier than we anticipated, so we decide to hang at the hostel for a while instead and get a ride later. We need a morning off as we are both exhausted. It doesn’t take long to decide that a morning off might not be enough, and we cave in and put our names on the bunk list for tonight  – we’ve been vortexed into a zero day! Our first zero day for the CT – 357 miles of hard hiking and we’ve earned it 😀

The rest of the day is a wonderful lazy day of eating, baking, eating the baked things, buying expensive food from the market across the road, sitting, going for a walk around the entire town, chatting about hiking and post-hiking futures and dreams, a failed attempt at a nap, eating some more.

It’s just what the doctor ordered. It’s an uncomfortably full house tonight as there are some extra people that are tenting in the yard and staying in their cars that are hanging in the hostel. Not quite the perfect quiet rest day I’d hoped for but good nonetheless.

The day passes way too quickly and it’s bedtime. My earplugs are doing a perfect job of keeping me nicely asleep, until the 6’10” guy in the bunk perpendicular to mine manages to stretch out his legs and kick me in the face. Oh joy. Oh hostels. I try to head to the couch to sleep but it’s already occupied. Bah!!! So much for a restful pillowed sleep! I curl up as small as I can and doze on and off in fear of giant feet for the rest of the night. Can’t win them all!