[addenda, 2008-09-08-0728: all sorts of berries are now ripe, and bear shit,smelling sweet, filled with them. I also picked up and peeled some white oak acorns I hope I'll have the industry to process.
I'm walking along a paved road as I type--loving this road: no brush to scrape against, as long as no cars, as now.
Data entry from resupply at Grant Grove Market:
guiding principles: some heavy fresh stuff to be eaten sooner. Diverse but not likely to be binged on options for carbs, fat, protein at each eating time. Price.
2 apples @ .79 ea
2 armour potted meat @ .70 ea
1 armour vienna sausage @ 1.09
2 barbie poptarts pkg of 12 @ $1.99 ea (on sale and Yogi?, I think, mentioned poptarts)
1 big can fruit (to be eaten there, on sale) @ .89
3 ~13oz instant potatoes @2.29 ea
1 bisquick 10oz? @ 2.39
1 sm pkg sunflower seeds, roasted, salted @1.29
6 eggs @1.29
1 its it vanilla ice cream @.99 (eaten there)
10oz cheddar @$6
2 potatoes @ 1.19 ea (charged for 1)
1 skippy extra chunky peanut butter @2.89
2 7oz mahtma spanish rice @1.09 ea
3 7oz starkist chunk light tuna pouch @2.89 ea
2 frozen chicken burrito @ .49 ea (eaten there)
3 large yellow onion @ .69 ea
total 46.51
--
so far the only mistake may be the poptarts as by this AM I've eaten them all--we'll see. Peace.
]
2008-09-07-2037 a good and hard day. I wasn't far from Lake Sequoia, actually, maybe only a mile. I was tired, dirty, hungry, thirsty. The lake is a YMCA camp, but it is possible to walk in, as long as you don't go where campers are. But there are signs. . . I was sort of walking on eggshells/crackly leaves. Found a spring eventually. Further on found a hillside in the sun, set out solar charger, went down to creek to rinse off finally--clothes, poison oak rash in the very cold water. Cooked breakfast: freeze-dried lasagna, seaweed, dried pepper, tesco yorkshire pudding/pancake dough congealed a bit. Felt a bit better, but flies were annoying, and food uncertainty nagging, and decided to move on.
That led to a bit of bushwhacking which I had had enough of and was very tired of. . . my energy wasn't the best. After a while (I had walked through a shrub which left me studded with sticky seeds--a variant on the velcro ones I had earlier been accreting and at least as painful to remove without scissors from leghair, and worse, they then stick to fingers. I do need to make those nylon shell pants--) I sat and cooked the last of my food: two more freeze-drieds (chili, spaghetti) + seaweed + pepper and read a bit of _Mason & Dixon_. Shortly after continuing on from this break I found, thank goodness, a maintained, used, and unovergrown foot trail which went up to overlook Lake Sequoia, and then went down to the east, the way I wanted to go.
Then I saw my first giant sequoias! I have yet to see them in such densities as the coast redwoods grow--maybe these sequoias need the mixed forest.
I was tired, the route seemed to take much longer than I'd expect from the map, and the roads were all over the place, and I wasn't sure which way to go. After a bit of wavering, I continued east-ish. Finally, my first parked vehicle sighting, then people--I arrived in Grant Grove.
A friendly ranger there by the Grant tree helped me plan out my potential route. There are small stores here, Cedar Grove (to the east, near the end of 180), and Lodgepole (south). Eventually I began to walk again, intending to find the store, hoping it might be good, and open. Again a maze of roads and trails (assumption is every one is going back and knows from where they started--this wouldn't be so hard, but there were no other walkers). I made it. The store was open, good enough, and I resupplied, so far it seems, more or less gracefully. I may give details later, but don't feel like doing the data entry now, just this: - ~$46. And I got through to my mom (has been an ongoing project)--she was able to call in to the payphones on the porch where I was eating and depackaging food.
I am partway up to Panoramic Point and Park Ridge. If the ridge is not too cliff-like, I should be able to get down to an OHV road, and then all is good, assuming the roads & trails on the map between there and Lodgepole exist and are in good shape. Else, I'll need to backtrack and try another possibility further north. A map with topo lines could be handy. I could also hitch various places, or walk along the highway, but would rather not.
Well I'm in no rush, know where to get food, and Lodgepole looks fairly close, and I may have a comfortable week's worth of food, and I seem to be high and south enough now that bugs, temp, and forest fire smoke are not making me want to move on. . . no rush. That fire is around the middle fork of the Kings River, and they've been letting it burn since July apparently, in Kings Cyn NP, but in the national forest part they try to put it out.
I never made it into the visitor's center. Maybe if I have to backtrack I'll stop in then. Tomorrow I might not move much, and do more reading and sewing/mending.
They have mirrors around here, and I have got to looking rather wild.
after Lodgepole, then perhaps to Mineral King, then through Golden Trout, south to Manter Mdw, and out the way I came in p'haps.
2204
Peace,
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