The light was pretty much gone as we hurriedly ate a desert of mom cookies. As there have been clouds looming all evening, we used the last bit of day to pitch ol’ blue land. Now I can lay down and recount the days events by head lamp.

Every building in Sierra City could qualify as rustic. The Mountain Shadows Cafe was well kept, yet certainly rustic. A sign outside bearing the union jack read “Old English Fish and Chips.” The proprietor was indeed old, and English. We stayed away from the “Bangers and Mash” having instead our usual American fare. On a corner T.V. I watched an unreasonably large procession of marshals, sheriffs, helicopters, motorcycles and armored cars transporting the alleged Unabomber to a fresh cage. The woman said with a sigh, “There just getting nuttier and nuttier aren’t they.” Her accent formed nuttier into nuttiugh. I appreciated her comment and certainly understood that it was a sweeping analysis of all the movers and shakers of T.V. land. The thing squawking at me so early in the morning, however, left me less than appreciative.

Some Swiss guy with the most far out glasses I have ever seen gave us twenty bucks worth of freeze dried food. I won’t even attempt to alliterate his pronunciation of “mountain chile.”

Dyl’s hip was bothering him so much coming into town this morning that he could barely walk. He was extremely downtrodden feeling that he might not even make it out of Sierra City. Make it out of town we did. We’ll have to wait and see about Canada. He says its been progressively worse every morning. We talked about what ending the trip would be like. What it would feel like and mean to us. We would finish someday. I proposed that, if necessary, we could start on his birthday, July 19t, and end on mine, October 18th, the year we both turn 48. Twice as old for the second half!

We started quite late out of town. There was a rather arduous climb up into the rugged Sierra Buttes. The climb was only difficult from an empirical perspective. In practice, no climbs are difficult anymore.

I lost the water bottle from the bathroom at Donner Pass. We now have a single one liter bottle between us. We have to plan water to the same degree we did back in the desert with all four bottles.

The terrain is still rather mountainous. Some day, in the scope of geologic time, these rugged Sierra Buttes may be the high Sierras. They are growing larger steadily where as the larger range to the south is peaking out. A heavy rain seemed more than likely for most of the day. It never did fall. This entry I feel is a bit jagged. I must be very tired.