DAY 108: AN UNPLANNED ZERO

miles: 0

First hotel room without on-site laundry = First time doing laundry at a laundromat on trail. 

At least it was a clean one. And it looked cool...

Manchurian wandering the streets of Shasta.

We spent this particular morning in the best way possible: drinking quality coffee, eating quality pastries, and people watching outside of a coffee shop. The perfect morning. And what I miss the most while on trail.

All I daydream about:

- Drinking a fine cup of coffee in the morning
- Eating eggs and toast
- Holding in my hands (and drinking of course) an ice cold glass of ice water
- Sitting outside of a bakery/bar/breakfast joint and people watching while munching

We got to do these things this morning. Finalllllly!

Oh. Then we did laundry...

...

With the best of intentions to get out of town in a timely fashion, we hustled our way through grocery shopping, resupply, lunch and packing our bags. I even skipped going to the library to blog in favor of getting out of town earlier.

Ben during resupply shopping.

The folks at Fifth Season (an outdoor store) were incredibly kind and accommodating to us hikers. They let us use their restroom, charge our electronics, and leave our packs in their store while we went shopping! This store has a "reputation" for being not hiker friendly, but we had a completely positive experience with them!

Once shopping was done, we found the nearest city bench and proceeded to explode our packs, and pack them with food. This is when we met Dan.

Dan lives in this beautiful van (featured down below) that just happened to be parked right next to the bench (also shown below) that Ben and I were spreading everything out on. We got to talking and eventually we found ourselves hanging out in his van with him. We were having a great time not leaving when Manchurian showed up with his bag packed. He had been rushing to get to us, intent on leaving town immediately, but was quickly persuaded into drinking a beer. One thing led to the next and all of us were eating thai food together. Obviously not leaving tonight, we went with the flow. It just seemed natural to stay in Shasta another night - the conversation was great, the town was too good to be true, and we had a new friend!

At the end of the night Dan shuttled us to the edge of town where we camped for free for the night.