John Muir Trail Day 12 – Vermilion Valley Resort
Journal entry for August 28, 2009.
On this planned rest day, I woke up around 7am to use the restroom and decided go to the cafe to get breakfast instead of going back to sleep. I ordered a huge breakfast with pancakes, hash browns, sausage, and eggs. Jon ordered the same but only took a couple of bites since he had to board the ferry.
I rented internet for 24 hours for $20. The laptop they gave me was slow as hell. Opening up a website would take many minutes. I wanted to check my SPOT Satellite Messenger page online but gave up after an hour or so. There was only one laptop, so if for example four people rented internet for 24 hours, they’d have share same machine.
I had the best pastrami sandwich I’ve ever had for lunch. Byron the cook was amazing. After lunch I did some laundry. Ryan and I combined our clothes since each of us only had a few items.
I was pretty bored the rest of the afternoon. Since I was one day ahead of schedule, one possibility was to take another day off at Vermilion, but after that afternoon, I couldn’t wait to get back on the trail. I think my body got used to the hiking everyday and sitting around all day made me restless. I was definitely getting back on the trail the following day. The original plan was to do the JMT in 25 days, ending on a Thursday to take the bus from Lone Pine to Los Angeles on a Friday. Since that bus only run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I would now have to do it 23 days. With no more planned rest days the rest of the way, I decided to combined the last 2 days (Guitar Lake to Mt. Whitney to Whitney Portal) into one long 17-mile day.
At night, I had dinner with Ken, Payge and Gary, the repairman of the resort. I had a “lighter” dinner by ordering a chicken salad. I didn’t think I could handle one more big greasy meal. I couldn’t resist getting the apple pie for dessert though.
Vermilion Valley Resort
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This requires internet, but you can open a SpotAdventure.com account and embed that Live Map into this blog here so everyone could see you in real time if you like. The code is provided in the map. Lots of cools stuff so you don’t need to always go back to your Shared Page. Enjoy your adventures.