Day 11

Day 11, July 13 (Alexandra) Today was supposed to be a short/ rest day. We woke up late after a night of storms and slowly packed up camp. By 9:30 am we started the final mile to JMT. When we arrived, the place looked like the set of an old western movie. There was a large group of hikers who had gotten in earlier in the morning & were organizing their resupply. Half of their group had finished their trip while the remaining two were going on to finish the trip at Whitney. We rang the cow bell (no joke) and this 1,000 year old lady hobbled out and got our info for our food buckets. I wandered over to the “store” and made some pharmacy purchases. I asked if there was any mail for us and she said no. I was pretty bummed about it. Several hikers never make it to MTR or don’t want to carry several items they thought they might need so we went through the buckets of free “stuff” & we grabbed some good finds: Things I bought at the pharmacy: 10 Ibuprofen pills 10 Benedryl pills 1 chapstick Bug repellent Found in bucket: More toilet paper Hot Sauce Packets Chocolate Sauce packets Soy Sauce packets. We refilled our water bottles, got organized and started to head out when the mail lady came running out with two letters for us! We are loved! We weighed our now full packs & mine was at 27 pounds and Jasin's was at 32 pounds. That’s everything we have for 10 days in the woods. Considering how much bigger Jasin is than me, it doesn't seem fair that our packs are close in weight, but I was able to hike all day with the weight. We hiked across the canyon with rain clouds looming and thunder rolling across the canyon. We met a nice ranger named Doug who checked our permit at lunch. Today we entered Kings Canyon National Park and almost got lost. We hiked longer than planned and ended up at Evolution meadow. We both got to cross the deepest river crossing so far and when we reached our campsite we stuck our feet and heads in the river. It felt awesome. We have a very long day ahead tomorrow so we ate dinner early, are reading our letters and are lights out by 7:30 pm woo! Love, Day 11 (1/2 way there)