We saw the jewel named Drakesbad from atop a ridge and descended to it after speaking with Cindy and Rich (finally cell service), and boy were we thrilled after having met Ed and his hugs and then given a towel and an encouragement to "Enjoy!" We went to the pool and really couldn't have been happier....and dinner of vegetable lasagna, green beans, salad with raspberry viniagarette and pine nuts, asiago cheese and rosemary bread and a dessert parfait that could have been pictured in a food magazine...Wooo! Yeah baby! We soaked in the pool for a while longer then walked to our camp, woke up and did it all over again!!
So we haven't camped in a designated campground with bear lockers until that night, so what did I do but put our food in the bear lockers, to keep it from being eaten by bears...right? Well, no one told us that they're not MICE proof! We were DEVESTATED when we went to get our food, and saw holes all over the three expensive food bags I had bought just for the trip, plus multiple food items needed to be discarded because of contamination-Aaaarrrrggghhhhhh....I was ticked.
But life went on and I went back into the pool with a full belly from a yummy breakfast....what can you do?
We found ourselves in a dilemma as we realized that we weren't going to be able to pick up our next box in Belden until Tuesday due to the holiday...so after pondering over multiple possibilities, we asked for a ride from a Drakesbad employee going into Chester, a nearby town, and thought that we would just resupply at the store to be able to get ourselves to Sierra City, skip Belden and just have that box forwarded. We got dropped off at the Best Western, bought a room, went shopping, ate some pizza, watched some movies on television (you know, the usual), and then tomorrow we'll find a ride back to Drakesbad and continue our trek south. And after all of that work of getting the "wine" box sent! (Thanks and sorry Rich!)
Our main reason for doing this is because of just trying to keeping moving forward toward the Sierra's. We could have made it to Belden on Sunday, and waiting all the way to Tuesday just didn't make sense to us; more so because Belden is this random, weird little town-not a good place to rest in we've heard.
So that's that...we're looking at getting into Sierra City on Friday. Won't be able to celebrate my birthday there on Thursday so we're just going to have to pretend that I was born on the 10th. :)
Off to go elevate my swollen feet! ;)
Cassandra