North California started off beautifully. We woke up by a lake in the sunrise and began walking through an area with many lakes, then slowly climbed to Dick’s Pass, where we took a break (and obviously shared many jokes). The landscape was still pretty volcanic, with more reddish scree over the trail. We stayed that night at a campsite overlooking Lake Tahoe. We were surprised at how long we’d been walking along it and happened to have cell service, so I looked up the square mileage of Lake Tahoe. It’s about 200 miles square, which made me wonder how it compared to the Great Lakes. I looked up Lake Michigan, the nearest one to where I live. That one is about 22,000 miles square. I shared this with Daisy and Tinkle, bragging a bit from my Michigander pride. I wonder how long it would take to hike the length of one of the Great Lakes (maybe that’ll have to go on the bucket list).

On this section, I convinced Tinkle and Daisy Dukes to try for a 28 mile day. I felt like I needed a challenge to distract me; I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed Tim and it was hard to see him and say goodbye again. The day was beautiful, though, surrounded by wide open spaces where we could see the trail for miles. I was deeply regretting my choice to do the 28 mile day by the time I started stumbling down the steep rock staircase that led down to Donner Pass (yes, THE Donner Pass, of the infamous Donner party). We were desperately trying to make it to the restaurant before they closed. They gave thru-hikers a free 40 ounce beer, which definitely helped to numb the feeling in my feet and legs and back and entire body. We ate with other hikers and together, we did one of the most hikertrash things I did all trail. There was a kid at the table behind us who didn’t like his fettuccine alfredo and only ate a few bites before the family left. By this point, we were pretty much black holes of hunger and time and budget limited our food consumption rather than satiation. Obviously we had to do our part in reducing the amount of food waste and took care of the plate ourselves. I have a theory that the 40 ounce beer is a very clever business model. I think it costs $2.50, but I think most of the thru-hikers that drank them felt that $30 was very reasonable for a bed in the hostel, myself included.

I introduced Daisy and Tinkle to the Trololo guy (see video for explanation) and we graced the trail with our dulcet tones for much of the next couple days through meadows, over more open hills, and dark forests. We met a few dogs, ran into Colin (Flower) again, and found a hut in the woods with a guitar and funny hats in it. Much fun was had.