Date: 2018-07-10
From: Wiley Shelter

To: Stealth Campsite just outside of Kent
Miles today: 12.9

DAY 126We were up, packed up and gone before anyone even stirred at the camp next door. Another hot and sweaty night in the tent, and it's supposed to be warm today so we're hoping to make it to a little store early in the day to try to get a cold drink. We got a little turned around trying to get to the store. I thought we were going right over a covered bridge, but turns out we had to make a turn off the road we crossed and walk a little bit to the covered bridge to find the store. It was really too early for lunch, so we just grabbed a cold drink and a snack and sat at their picnic table. They're really nice in the store, they let us charge our phone with their outlet, and fill our water bottles from the faucet. Also, they had the air conditioning on very cold in the store.We had to go into Kent to do a small resupply, but before we got there we had one ridge to climb up and across and go down into town. When we were at one of the lookouts on top of the ridge, we met a woman who was out doing some trail work. She offered to give us a ride into town when we got to the bottom, if we lingered and took our time because she said she was pretty slow. We thanked her and said we would probably take her up on the offer. With that she headed out at what seemed like a dead run, and was shortly out of sight. We started down too, but the trail is very rocky and steep in this area so we had to go kind of slow. At this point it was after 2:00 and we hadn't had lunch yet. We decided we better stop for a quick lunch because we were pretty much out of gas. Our quick lunch wasn't much at this point as we were out of peanut butter, so it was just a Fluff sandwich and a couple of snacks. By the time we got down to the road the ¢slow¢ woman was long gone, so we faced walking the .9 to town in the heat. When we arrived in town we went right to the visitor center where they offered phone charging, water fill station, restrooms and a coin operated hot shower. We opted for a shower first, but it was quite frustrating. The shower head sprayed at such a wide pattern that only two or three of the 16 water jets would strike your body. The water temperature, which you couldn't adjust, was so hot you could barely get underneath it. We had to take some of our water bottles in and fill it with water then dump it over us to actually get wet. And, the water was so hot when you dumped it over you nearly scalded yourself. We joked we could have had a cup of tea while we showered! So, we ended up paying $4 and we did get cleaned up, but not really cooled down.After our ¢lovely¢ shower we headed over to the laundromat and put in our dirty clothes and walked next door to the IGA for a resupply. It was getting late, but we were hungry so we decide to go to the pizza place and eat. We each got a calzone and ate half and packed out half for tomorrow's lunch. After we ate it was really getting dark and we weren't looking forward to the hike back out to the trail, so we stopped at the outfitter on the way out of town and asked if there was any place to camp in town. His response was no, you have to hike back to the trail. It was really too expensive to stay in town, so we resigned ourselves to make the trip back out to the trail. It was getting dark now, and as we walked back to the trail the cars passing us had their headlights on. As soon as we got back on the trail we regretted getting going so late. The mosquitoes were terrible, and we now needed our headlamps to hike. The trail immediately goes up a steep ridge with very few places to camp. The benefits of our shower were soon lost as we began to sweat and stink all over again. About a half mile up we came to a semi flat spot where we could set our tent up, so we quickly set up in the viscous mosquitoes and quickly climbed in for the night. We lay there for quite a while in the heat before we eventually fell asleep.