6/15/14 Sunday. Walking In Sunshine. 6/16/14 Monday. Dinner at the Roscoe (gravel spreader)

16 miles

The trail took us all over today, we were in the forest, on open hilltops, on saddles between mountains, at 2 springs, on rocky cliffs, on sand covered red bedrock hills, whole hillsides covered with yellow Mule Ears, Arrow Leaf Balsam, Coreopsis, Forget-Me-Not, Larkspur, white to lavender, to bright pink Pussy Paws,

even some white Lewisia.

  

We said that the trail out did itself all day because it was Peggy's birthday. The trail routed us through fields of flowers. 

Mule Ears

More Mule Ears

Happy birthday Peggy!

Mule Ears, Paintbrush, blue Toadflax.

Peggy walking through a ground cover of pink Pussy Paws. 

Pussy Paws.

More Mule Ear meadows.

Peggy, late in the afternoon,  in a field of Lupine and Mule Ears.

We rested beside the trail for a quick drink of Gatorade.

Finally we came to our camp spot with a spring 1/2 mile off trail. This Roscoe gravel spreader was parked here, you can't quite see Peggy sitting on it making dinner but we were excited to say "No ants crawling on us tonight!"

 

Dinner at the Roscoe!

We've positioned ourselves so that we have 9 miles in the early cool morning to get to the Feather River, we can then spend an hour or so enjoying the river around noon. 

6/16/14 Monday. 13.75 miles or so.

It was cold this morning. We think there must be a cold front over the area because we've  been cold the last few days and we're not as high elevation as the Sierras which we left days ago.    

I had to spend time this morning retaping my feet (moleskin & KT tape).  Robin brought me another pair of shoes in Sierra City and I'm still trying to break them in.  I have sore spots in addition to the regular foot pain most hikers experience. 

Today we walked in deep forest all morning except where we came out to an arched bridge over the Feather river. 

Crossing it we stayed an hour beside the river rinsing & drying clothes as well as eating lunch.  It's so great to hike where water is plentiful. 

While hiking today,  we came upon a road where the PCT wasn't evident, after looking around we found that another hiker had left us a marker to help locate the trail!

Walk this way!

I've been fascinated by the beautiful big Sugar Pine cones, this one is especially big.  They lay all over the ground under the Sugar Pine trees. 

Our break at the river finished, we had to climb a long, steep uphill section to get out of the river valley. This is an example of the trail when trees fall across it.  This one was really hard to get over because it was multiple trees down on a steep hillside. 

A real jumble of downed broken trees. 

Pine Drops. 

We met one older man, his adult son & young grandson hiking out of the Feather River having fished and camped overnight. We met one woman section hiking alone and that was all the company we had today. 

There was good water along the trail after e left the river.  We hiked about 5 of the uphill miles, found a nice flat spot covered in pine needles and set up our camp.  The mosquitoes were out and we put on our head nets in defense. 

Once again we cooked away from our tent site then zipped ourselves inside our tents to get away from the bugs. A thru hiker named Homeless Guy came by and we chatted with him, he's been hiking with Caty and said she'd stopped around Truckee to vacation with her family and she shouldn't be far behind us!  I hope we see her!

Peggy & I discussed adding more caloric food to our resupply boxes, we both feel like we're running out of energy. Hope there is something at Belden, our next town stop.