A Birthday Backpack Trip for the Oldsters

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Our boys decided that for Dale’s birthday, we would go backpacking. But, they did not trust us completely and further decided to carry our stuff. I told Nate that we had backpacked before being married but he would not listen.

I’d ordered a bunch of freeze-dried food to take to Hawaii, in the event we had to work there, now was a good time to use all of this food. I sent 3/4 of the food with Nate to carry.

As this was a last-minute trip, we did not have permits so Justin left at 3am in order to be first in line at the Interagency office. Alas, the system had changed so now he was nearly last in line. Our choices were limited to sites out of Horseshoe Meadows.

Our plan was that we would hike in with Justin and his boys on Friday, then Nate, Bekki and their 3 would join us on Sat afternoon.

We started out at what we considered early. After driving for about 40 minutes, we were talking about food and I realized we had forgotten all of Justin’s pots and pans. He had given us his pots and pans to run thru the dishwasher. We turned around, went home, got the pots and pans from the dishwasher, and started back on the road.

We met Justin and the boys, and by afternoon, Justin had obtained the permits. We started up the trail.



Justin hoped that we could hike in 2 miles, 2 miles uphill. We made it just feet short of the junction of the Pacific Crest Trail. We set up camp, made dinner and fell asleep quickly.

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