There is much to recount but I need rest. So, this may be inadequate.

The woman at the Old Station Post office was all fired up to celebrate the places twenty-fifth anniversary. It may well have been her twenty-fifth year working there. She had cake and chocolates and juice all laid out on a tablecloth of end to end USA napkins.

Talk of quitting at the Oregon border is getting serious. There are a few factors at play. As mentioned earlier, we are in a great deal of pain. We have pushed way too hard and it is really catching up with us. There is really not enough time to make it all the way and enjoy it. There may not be enough time to make it all the way without doing some permanent damage to our bodies. Really, I think we would need some slow days, ten miles at the most, of rest in order to make it at all. Dyl, who is in the most pain of the two of us, has been reduced to borrowing all expense money for me, and is the one on a schedule, said he would decide by Burney Falls whether to quit or bust ass for the international border. There is yet another, and perhaps even more compelling, factor. We are beginning to view life and the trip much more openly. Certainly we have got over associating quitting with failure. The benefits of doing the trail in separate sections makes more sense. All the people, usually older, doing the trail in pieces have influenced and inspired us to a great degree. Their talk of finishing is as fervent as ours. Completing the trail to them, though not in one unbroken shot, means as much as it has to us. Some things, I guess can not be forced. This story is going to have to write itself.

Full moon hiking the Hat Creek Rim was less than successful. Our tenderness couldn’t take the ankle twisting toe bashing hip jarring dimly lit rocks. Camp was resigned to well short of twenty five miles.

The package arrived at Tuolomne Meadows. They forwarded it to Belden Town. They, in turn, have forwarded it to Castella.