4/25/19

Mileage: zero

We wake in the morning in our dumpy motel room, microwave water for our respective coffee and tea and are faced with the same conundrum we had last night- how do we do our laundry? The motel has no laundry and the nearest laundromat is a 15 mile hitch away. We make skirts from our rainjackets, don our puffies, stuff our gross hiking clothes into a stuff sack and venture out into the bright thin sunlight to the RV park next door. The park is quiet, most of the rigs still shuttered for the winter. Outside the office we find an elderly man feeding peanuts to a couple of plump Abert’s squirrels, the ones with the long, tufted ears.

“Well I suppose you can,” he says, after we ask if we can use their laundry. “I was just about to unlock the laundry room for the season. We got a rec room too next door, if you want to play foosball while you wait.” We ask if he has soap for sale, and he hands us a single tide pod. “Try not to eat it,” he chuckles, as he hitches up his pants.

While the laundry is spinning he shows us the cabin they have for rent. It’s just $10 more than our motel room, and looks to be brand new. It has a full kitchen, with dishes and pots and pans, and sleeps six people. Huge windows let in the night. As soon as we see it we decide to reserve it for the night, and move over from the motel. We can cook food here, with veggies and stuff from the general store! The freakin dream!

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We make huge salads of baby kale, quinoa in a bag, avocado, salsa and chickpeas (all from the general store!) and spend the rest of the afternoon laying in bed, working on our blogs and drifting in and out of sleep. A storm moves in, the light dims and rain drums on the cabin’s roof. We turn the heat up high and make more food, then drift back to bed. Muffy mends a small hole in her sleeping bag with dental floss. We sort our food for the next section. The rain stops, the sky clears. We can see the stars through the ponderosas. We fall asleep with the window open. Tomorrow we walk.

I’m using these blog posts to help raise money for Francis, an El Salvadoran refugee who is raising funds for an asylum appeal. You can view his fundraiser here.

Francis’ fundraiser is currently at $2,700- day 17 from the MRT will go up on this blog when his fundraiser reaches $2,800 Let’s help Francis get the support he needs! Click here to check it out. And thank you! 😀