It was foggy and drizzly again when I woke up the next morning, but knowing I would be in town that afternoon gave me more energy. Towns have people, pizza, and showers. I was getting down to the dregs of my food - a handful of trail mix, a tortilla, and some peanut butter. Thinking of visiting a bona fide grocery store made my mouth water.

I had 4500 feet to descend before that, though. The Blacktail Trail is on an old mining road bed, and there are still pieces of minecarts and machinery lying around in some places.

I took the descent fast — sometimes running, sometimes speed-walking. With barely any food in it, my pack felt like it had helium balloons attached to it. I started listening to the first episode of Blueprint For Armageddon, Dan Carlin’s podcast series on World War I. I guess I needed a way to distract myself.

While I was making my way down the mountain, the chronically-inflamed extensor tendons on both of my feet were starting to feel a little bit of strain. I had had two or three bad tendonitis flare-ups in the previous few years, and I wanted to avoid getting off-trail. I knew I would probably have to rest in town until my feet felt totally healed.

Right before I got to the border, I heard something crashing through the forest below me, and saw a bear in the distance running down the hill toward the switchback I’d be walking on in a couple of minutes. I couldn’t tell from that distance whether it was a grizzly or black bear, but I really wasn’t trying to run into one either way.

ehhhh it's the border

My tendons were feeling worse and worse as I finished the descent and started the roadwalk toward Eureka. I was also low on water, and I had to scramble underneath a barbed-wire fence and get some from a somewhat gross-looking little stream. I saw the first car (and the first humans I’d seen in almost two days) about an hour and a half into the roadwalk, and decided to hitch it. So I stuck my thumb out and tried to look friendly.

The pickup slowed down and the couple in the cab told me I could hop in the back, but to duck down so that the police wouldn’t see. I was so grateful, and glad I wouldn’t have to punish my feet on the four-mile highway walk into town. The feeling of lying in the back of a pickup truck going 40 miles an hour was absolutely exhilarating for me after watching the world pass by at 3 miles per hour for so long.

At some point during the ride, a heavy yellow bucket fell on my leg and I kicked it back up. The driver pulled over, got out, and came around to the pickup bed. As he was tying the bucket to the side of the bed, he explained to me that their septic system hadn’t been working and they’d been using buckets for a few weeks. I tried to play it off, like “Okay, cool, yeah, makes sense,” but as soon as he started driving again I was laughing out loud to myself.

The couple dropped me off at a drugstore in Eureka. I chatted with them for a little while, then went off to find pizza and wifi. I ate at this pizza/arcade joint run by three really old women. No one else was there, and I felt like they were staring at me the whole time. And the pizza was awful, just completely rock-hard. Still desperate for interaction with any humans that would understand what I was doing, I posted the following message to the PNT Hikers Facebook group:

The town hall in Eureka offers free showers and camping, so this would be my home base while I was in town. I got a shower in and walked over to the laundromat, sweating in only my rain gear (this is always an issue when doing laundry in trail towns).

When I got back to the town hall to set up my tent, there were four other PNT hikers there! I met Sam, Don, Cookie Monster, and Morning Star. Morning Star and Cookie Monster, an older couple from the Netherlands, had hiked the PCT a few years prior, hence their already-established trail names. Sam and Don were a younger couple from Olympia, Washington – This was their first thru-hike attempt, but they had spent a year and a half researching, preparing, and going on shorter hikes.

I was so relieved to finally chat with other thru-hikers, and they all seemed like really friendly people. Unfortunately, they were all leaving the next morning, and I would be staying for at least another day waiting for my feet to heal a little bit.

 

I ended up staying in town for two more days – It seemed wise to wait until my feet felt totally pain-free before walking again. I spent my second day resupplying at the grocery and hardware stores, and hanging out at the town hall. I mailed a box of food to Yaak, a tiny hamlet about 3 days ahead by trail with no good resupply option.

On the third day, I randomly met two people a few years younger than me who I ended up hanging out with for most of the afternoon. Both had relatively long family histories around Eureka, one through the Kootenai people and one through European settlers. They showed me around the town’s little museums and pointed to pictures of their grandparents and great-grandparents, and gave me endless takes on growing up in small-town Montana.

My restless energy was getting pretty unbearable by the end of the last day. The excitement of being in a town surrounded by other humans had mostly left me, and I couldn’t wait to get back on trail.