Stayed with some awesome Couchsurfer dudes in South lake Tahoe the day after eating myself silly. They had a big family camping tent in the backyard filled with foam blocks and comforters where I slept, a slackline, a friendly husky-malamute dog, and a recently acquired on Craigslist tandem bicycle which I rode to an outfitter to replace my second leaky Platypus with a sturdier MSR Hydromedary. So far so good. They invited me to go with them to Burning Man and dude, I still might just take them up on the offer. You may notice here that they also hooked me up with an incredible new haircut. More on that in a bit.


Here's a campsite on the shores of Aloha Lake in the Desolation Wilderness. The lake has dozens or maybe even a hundred or so little islands, and I took a sweet warm water skinny dip to swim out to nine of them before returning to shore. From Echo Lake I fell in with a couple of other really fun folks, "Glitter Bomb" (I gave him his trail name, asking where it came from is not for the faint of heart) and "Wild Child aka Barely Legal." He's 32, and she's 18, and the three of us got all of the mind-in-the-gutter talk out in the open quite early on. This began the four nights in a row of getting off of my early to rise, early to bed schedule as when a fire is smoldering late and the conversation and company is warm and inviting, it becomes easy to stay up past midnight on a repeated basis. Not good for making miles, but great for relaxation.


Wood art.


Some lake or another up in the Desolation Wilderness, West of Lake Tahoe.


Wild Child and I were invited to speak to a group of Sierra Club-led teens and their leaders near Richardson Lake. They lured us over with offers of free food and fresh-caught crawfish, but alas the crawfish were all eaten when we got there. Still Yogi'd some spicy rice and chicken, tortillas, etc and they insisted that I take about twelve packets of oatmeal, so I got to do an impromptu resupply with them. The kids were wide-eyed learning about the PCT and wilderness travel, and many of them seemed to be interested in doing longer trips on their own after high school, etc. Felt good to share some of the lore and love of the trail with the kids from the inner city.