My first priority upon making it to town was to get to the post office before it closed. I had ordered a new compass (lost), hiking pole (bent), and water bladder (leaky and a broken clip).

I retrieved my packages and headed across the street to a small park behind the town’s library. There, I ran into Teddy (who I’d met briefly met at the end of my hell-bushwhack about a week earlier) and two PNT hikers I’d never met, Rebecca and Marguerite. They were just about to head out – I think they were planning on getting a hitch out toward the Pasayten Wilderness to cut off the long asphalt roadwalk out of Oroville. In the 100-degree heat, I couldn’t blame them.

The park behind the library had a smelly bathroom, so I changed into my “town clothes”, which means putting leggings under my short shorts to be more modest and wearing my less-smelly shirt. I still wasn’t sure where I was staying that night. Most of the other hikers were staying in the Camaray Motel in the middle of town, but my budget was pretty tight, so I hoped to find somewhere to camp out. I dropped in to find Bugs and Moose and get some water from the lobby.

I had heard that the motel owners were very hiker-friendly, but I was still surprised to see a large map of the PNT outside of the motel. This was the most flamboyant real-life acknowledgement of the PNT’s existence that I had seen.

The motel owner cornered me while I was getting water from the lobby, asking if I wanted to get a room. I told him no, it wasn’t in my budget. He asked where I was planning on staying, and I said I wasn’t sure yet. So he rushed over to the hotel landline and started dialing furiously. “Hey, Joseph? Yeah, I’ve got a hiker for you. OK.” He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to me: “JOSEPH ENZENSPERGER”, and an address and phone number.


I knocked on the door a few times, and a wiry man with curly gray hair and big 80’s-style glasses came around the side of the house, introducing himself as Joseph. I followed him out back to a small, DIY-looking terraced garden shaded by fruit trees. Joseph had just gotten back from a bluegrass concert at the farmer’s market and was in the process of rolling a joint with a friend. I sat down and chatted with them for a little while, the smell of marijuana and rotting apricots hanging in the air.

Joseph was volunteering a lot of his time on a project to remove the Enloe Dam. The project had strong support from environmentalists and the Colville tribe, but local government officials had started a misinformation campaign centered upon the century of mining sediment currently trapped behind the dam. The reality was that removing the sediment would cost far less than the amount of money that the Oroville Public Utility Department had already poured into research for re-electrifying the dam.

After chatting for a while, I excused myself to take care of my hiker hunger before the nearby grocery store closed. I picked up a tub of yogurt, some fresh blueberries, and some granola and brought them back to the house just after the sun set. Joseph and his friend had left, so I set up my tent in the backyard, ate my dinner, and got ready to sleep. It was a hot, muggy 95-degree night, and my tent was occasionally pelted by apricots, but I was grateful to have a place to stay.


Joseph left early in the morning to do a presentation on the dam removal. I took a full zero day in town. It would be about 2 weeks of hiking until the next town, and 8 days until of hiking until I made it to Ross Lake Resort, where I had mailed myself a package of food about two months previously. For this 8-day resupply weight would be a primary concern, so I made sure that all of the food I bought had a high calorie-to-weight ratio.

I stocked up with :

  • Oats and cosmic brownies for breakfasts
  • Peanuts, raisins, and chocolate for my gorp bag
  • Cheez-its, pop tarts, and sour patch watermelons for snacks
  • Tortillas and peanut butter for lunches
  • Instant mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese for dinners
  • A fresh fuel canister for cooking

After I was done shopping, I bugged Bugs and Moose to take a shower in their motel room, then changed into my rain jacket and rain pants (extraordinarily uncomfortable in the 100-degree heat) to wash my hiking clothes using the motel’s laundry machines. I uploaded some photos and called some family and friends at the library, and used the bathroom out back (and a disposable razor from the grocery store) to shave. Toward the evening, I got some Mexican food with Bugs, Moose, Justin, Kate, Cookie Monster, and Morning Star, then hung out at a nearby brewery with Justin and Kate, learning a bit about their pre-hike lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Because Morning Star was having knee trouble, he and Cookie Monster decided they would hitch past the 30-mile roadwalk to start the Pasayten Wilderness the next day.

I stayed at Joseph’s house again that night. I had everything I needed and I was prepared to set off early the next morning.