Today, I experienced my very first zero day (no hiking day). I woke up this morning on the bottom bunk in a cabin, the sun was shining through all the tall trees outside the window. As I got out of bed, I could feel my calves so tender and sore. This is first time my legs have felt sore since I started! It must've been all that intense downhill from the last two days. I was pretty glad to be zeroing today when I could barely walk to the restroom. I finally took a shower and washed some of my clothes that I didn't get to wash at Ziggy's in the tub and threw it in the dryer to dry.

Five of us packed into Golden Boy's truck.

We all then headed out to do all our town errands (Sean, Kristen, Lisa, Rusty and I). Lisa and Rusty are from Houston and we have a mutual friend. I seem to always gravitate towards Texans or married couples, not sure why, it just happens! We first made a stop at the post office. I mailed some small things home I haven't used, forwarded a package and need to pick up a package from Zpacks. Unfortunately, the lady at the post office was super cranky and was pretty rude. She couldn't find my Zpacks package and wanted me to give her the tracking number, so I texted Will for it. Turns out their shipping department didn't send it out in time even though it was marked urgent, must've just been an accident and fell through the cracks. It wasn't a super big deal and I can wait for the new stakes so Will made sure a new order would be shipped to Wrightwood for me.

After that, we headed to Von's for resupply. This grocery store seemed like just another Safeway. Big Bear is a pretty big full service town that has most of everything, it's also the first town with stoplights. I pulled up a cart because I needed six days of resupply. I was a little nervous since I hadn't done a full resupply in town yet and had no clue how much to buy and what kinds of food. Each of us split off in our separate ways in the store picking out different things for what we needed. I threw in a summer sausage, block of cheese, bars, candy, couscous, some rice packages, etc. Some of these I have no clue how they will cold soak so we'll see. Since this is my first time, it'll just be an experiment to see how it will turn out and whether or not I have too much food. I feel like I bought too much but also have no clue! We also bought some food for dinner tonight. I ran into a handful of hikers all at the store, they each had shopping carts with their packs inside. It was a funny sight.

We then hit up big 5 sporting goods for some gear things. I ended up getting town shorts for when I do laundry, a racquetball for my sciatica, and kt tape. We were all starving by now and headed to a bagel/sandwich shop for lunch. I ordered a hot chicken bagel sandwich and a side salad. It was soooo good. Sean's friend Matt from LA met up with us. We finally headed home after checking out the candy store. Everyone started organizing their food as soon as we got home. I got some ziploc bags to repackage and shared with everyone. I ended up organizing snacks for each day in a baggie and my dinners in one. I wish I had more gallon bags but oh well. I filled my food bag to its rim and barely closed. It is SO heavy.

My old shoes have probably around 400 miles already on it so I ordered new ones!

We chilled the rest of the day at the cabin and scheduled some more blogs. I got to FaceTime Nancy so that was super fun and good to see her! I want to skype people from home more, I just need to have that down time. Two other hikers, Joe and Tori from San Francisco came over and made us some veggie lasagna and salad. It was delicious! It was so nice to just all sit together and eat. We talked about the trail, things we were learning and where we all met. It's so cool to reflect back since day one and how much we've all learned already, even though we're still in the beginning. Kristen helped me tape up my knee and back. Hopefully we'll notice a difference when we're hiking. The rest of the gang are in the living room watching a movie while I type out today's blog. I'm really thankful for this group of people. Everyone is so chill, funny, kind and not crazy. It feels weird to not be hiking for so long. I kind of forgot what it's like to hike again. We're supposed to head out to Onyx Summit tomorrow to pick up from the detour. It's gonna be a pretty long and heavy carry. It's also supposed to rain/snow sooooo eeep!