Barker Pass to Sierra City

We did meet up with the rest of TEC! Snaps was at the trailhead with her cousin, we hiked a couple miles in and ran into Hex and Jecks, then a few more miles in and ran into Pounce, Lil' One, Lobby and her mom! We camped with them that night at a creek-- did 11 miles today.

Woke up after everyone and left before every--- love that we keep doing that. We're hiking a lot faster than before, which is so very exciting for us. We hiked to I-40 (about 17.5 miles) and met up with Sinbad and waited for the rest of TEC. They decided to go into Truckee for foods and we decided to keep going. We're starting to freak out because of how far behind we are in schedule-- we need to do 25 miles every day without zeros from here on out to get to Canada by October 1. We are thinking of possibly flip-flopping to the border and hiking south. We hiked a couple miles in and camped.

Woke up around 7:30am and hiked to I-80's rest stop and refueled. The trail has been so well graded, which helps with the mileage. We hiked 20 miles to a campsite on a ridge and saw a fire in the distance. It was still lightening there and kind of freaked us out. We went to sleep, sure that it was a good distance away but woke up smelling smoke! Dangit got up and looked around but couldn't see the fire anymore and then it started to ran. Thank goodness. 

Fire! Maybe five miles away...

We got up early and started our hike towards Sierra City. Our plan is to get there for dinner-- which means we didn't take tons of breaks. Our legs are pretty tired perhaps from the long days, lack of sleep and pushing it to get to food quicker. We still have probably 3 days of food left in our packs! Ahh! Never again. We made it to Sierra City, got a chocolate milkshake and a Gut-Buster--- YUMMM!! We met a sweet couple on the porch of the country store who invited us to their home for showers. Thanks Dave, Denise and Julianna! Once we were clean, they let us to their washer and dryer and invited us to dinner. Just when it couldn't get any better… they invited us to sleep there…. on a BED! Yess! What a wonderful treat… and they cooked us breakfast in the morning-- pancakes!

Our lovely room at the Keyes!

We'll be heading out today either for the trail… or towards a bigger city to get to Washington. We've decided to flip and go southbound- it should give us an extra week or two for flexibility.