Sun. Sept. 11            No miles today       Zero in Sierra City

Well, when we planned our PCT adventure, we THOUGHT we’d be headed home today from Canada!  But I guess we’re not Ray and Jenny Jardine, and being ‘seniors’ takes its toll–we just can’t tear along the trail like the younger people.  We’ve NEEDED our “zero days”!  This morning we were just getting up from our “camp” by the church lawn, when Jim, who lives in a trailer next door, hallooed to ask if we’d like to come up for coffee.  Well, we sure would, and ended up having a great visit.  Jim is 78, retired, and he lives up here in the mountains “till after the second snow”, then goes down to the San Joaquin Valley to live on his boat, or else he goes down to Baja in Mexico.  He’s sort of a handyman, and told us about his latest projects, including repairs on the church.    We told him we were going to church later, and chided him a little when we found out he never attends.  But we did get to talk a little bit about the difference between REALLY knowing God and just knowing ABOUT Him and going to church as if it were a social club. 

Then we all trooped down to the Mountain Creek Inn for a big breakfast.  Jim showed us where a bear had come down and broken into the ice cream case several times till the owners got an electric fence set up!  The restaurant is great–they either compost or feed the chickens all their scraps, just like we do when we’re back at home in Petaluma.  Then Bill and I went for a walk and I did some writing, till time for church.

Church was totally cool.  The pastor turned out to be a REAL “circuit-riding Methodist minister”–he’d already preached at two other churches, starting at 8:00 this morning.  We really enjoyed the service–good hymns, and an “object lesson” that set the stage for a sermon on forgiveness, based on the parable of the unforgiving servant, which was prompted by Pete’s question to Jesus, “Lord, how many times do I have to forgive somebody if they sin against me?”  Looking at the visitor register, we noticed that a number of PCT hikers have been here.  The church folks told us that on the last Sunday of each month, they have a potluck after the service, and if it’s PCT thruhiker “season”, everybody brings PLENTY, so they can feed all the starving hikers!

Well, it wasn’t the last Sunday of the month, so we headed for fish & chips at the Red Moose restaurant, and discovered a lot of church folks there, so we had more great conversations with them!  The church building is very old, and it reminded me of the one where our Awana Club meets back home.  After totally stuffing ourselves at lunch, we rented a nice cozy room at the Buttes Resort (all the motorcyclists had left!) and I went down the street to do our laundry.  The store next door to the laundromat kindly let me sit inside at a little table, since it was a cloudy, cold, windy day, and the store was nice and warm.  Pretty soon, it began to drizzle and rain!  Yikes!  a constant stream of people were in and out of the store, all complaining about the unseasonable weather…”Can you believe this?  RAIN, in September!  And it’s snowing higher up!  What’s going on?”  I listened to them and was ENcouraged at the thought that the weather was unusual for this time of year, but DIScouraged at the thought of “snow higher up.”   I asked some of the folks about what was “normal” for this time of year, and they all said that normally, this is one of the nicest, most pleasant times of year around here.

Tonight Bill and I had dinner at the Mountain Creek Inn, where we met another thruhiker couple who’d just gotten into Sierra City a couple of hours before.  They were SOBO’s and said they did 28 miles today in order to reach Sierra City and get out of the cold, wind, hail, and yes, SNOW they’d been walking through for the last few days!  But the people at the restaurant said that the latest weather report is for improving conditions, so we went to bed quite encouraged and cheered up.  Tomorrow, as soon as the post office opens, we’ll get our box and hit the trail again!