Miles: 105.7 | Care packages, cookies, and a careful return to trail life. After a thoughtful shoe fitting at Outdoor 76 and a confident decision to trust my body again, we hike back out under clear skies for the first time in days. The evening is quiet and almost perfect — until anxiety creeps in after dark, reminding me that healing isn’t always linear.
In the morning I woke up and went to get my packages from the post office. My mom had sent me a care package with the best cookies ever! Michelin went to Wal Mart. We met back at the motel and then headed over to Outdoor 76 for my shoe fitting.
Rob sat me down in the shoe section and asked about how the weekend went. We agreed that I was ready to go back out. He remeasured my feet, remembering that my left was the one that had the problem and my first name! He gave me 3 options. I tried the first: La Sportiva Ultra Raptors. I tried them on, noticing the arch. The fact that there wasn’t a prominent one. They were comfortable but I wasn’t wowed. He moved on to the Brooks Cascadia 13. I hated the reinforced foam on the four corners. Next we tried a Hoka One One trail shoe. I wasn’t a fan of the way the ‘rail’ forced a forward motion on these. Lastly, he put me back into the La Sportivas.
After feeling all of the other options, these really felt like they fit like a glove! I really loved the cushioning of the Hokas, but I decided these were a better fit for me. Rob agreed. I grabbed a can of fuel and checked out. We went back to the motel and made sure we had everything.
Mike, our shuttle driver picked us up to go back to the trail. We realized after we got out there that the $3 shuttle from town was running, but totally spaced since it hadn’t been running all weekend.
We hiked 4.5 miles to the shelter. It was cloudy but nice, no rain!! No rain for the first time!
We arrived at the shelter around 3 all by ourselves! We started a little camp fire and made our dinners. It was a lovely night. Later another man showed up. He showed us some of his gear, most of which he made himself!
Later on after Michelin and I headed to bed, PB + J also showed up. I had seen them around in passing. It’s crazy how you can see people once and never again or end up leap frogging each other.
That night I woke up every hour for the first four hours with some small panic attacks. My heart rate would shoot up as soon as I was about to fall asleep. Michelin stayed awake with me. We did some deep breathing and eventually I exhausted myself so much that I fell asleep. We weren’t quite sure if it was the Seroquel (which I had only taken it a few times and we realized that each time was after having at least 1 beer...). It was a long night.