We got up early today, and along with Charlie, we made a breakfast feast for all the hikers– 2 kinds of pancakes, plus bacon, sausage and ham, with plenty of strawberries, bananas, butter and syrup and lingonberry jam to put on them.  All the hungry hikers were well-fed by the time we got done!

Then I found the official “hiker sewing basket” and basically spent the whole rest of the day sewing lots of projects, from fairly extensive repairs on Bill’s pack (and another hiker’s pack) to new construction of items Bill had lost. plus mending other hikers’ clothes.   I would have used Donna Saufley’s sewing machine, but unfortunately it was broken.  So all my sewing was done by hand, which is slow, but on the bright side, a hand-backstitched seam is actually much stronger than a machine-sewed seam.  It was a rather chilly day, though sunny, so I sat in the sun with my sewing, and it wasn’t long before various hopeful-looking hikers were stopping by with their stuff, asking, “Do you think you could fix this?”   That suited me just fine!  I love a sewing challenge. 

 To add to my fun, one of the Saufley dogs decided he wanted to “help” me and insisted on jumping up and lying on my lap.  Sometimes he lay down on top of the sewing.  I would have been tempted to say, “Doggone it, dog!  Go away!”  but he was just too cute to grump at. By the end of the day,  I’d done extensive repairs and replacements on two packs, made a new “medicine bag” for Bill and I (Bill lost the original when he fell on Fuller Ridge), a new headnet and sungloves for Bill (they were literally blown out of his pack sidepockets by the wind in the San Felipes), and lots of clothes-mending.

Meanwhile,  Bill went to REI and got new trek poles to replace the ones he broke on Fuller Ridge.   In 2005, a whole gang of us hikers all piled into “Big Red”, the Saufley’s van, but those days are over.  Somebody crashed “Big Red” and the insurance company said “No more hikers driving!”   So now, a whole crew of volunteers drives hikers to REI.

In the afternoon, the section-hiker couple (the Coxes) we met on Baden-Powell came in, all done with their hike, and  carrying  the makings of banana splits! All the hikers instantly were there from all the tents all over the yard!  Amazing how fast the word of “Food!” travels here!  I sat and ate my banana split with Mrs. Cox, and she told me about their adventures getting to Little Jimmy Campground.  She showed me pictures of it on her camera, and said that after we’d headed for the road and they kept on going, she figured out a new technique for crossing steep snow traverses.  “I hold on to the back of my husband’s pack,” she said.  “That way I’m not so scared.”  She was very cheery and talkative–very different from when we’d met on top of Baden-Powell, where she was rather quiet and a bit grim.  “I was scared,” she told me.  “I guess I wasn’t as friendly as normal.”  “Me, too” I said. 

 Later on, volunteer JJ gave us a ride to town and Bill talked to him some more (they’d had other conversations) about knowing God in a real way, not just as religion, and that the key issue was “who is the boss of my life— me, or God?” Bill got out our little Gideon New Testament and showed JJ the verses Romans 10:9-10 and Revelation 3:20.   JJ  said, “OK, I get this!  I’ve always believed in God, but I’ve been running my own life and calling all the shots.  I need to quit that and let God be the Boss.”  So  he prayed with Bill to let God know what he’d decided. It was awesome!

Then JJ headed back to the Saufleys to help the hikers, and we headed for pizza.  The pizza place had only been open for a week, and it was very good.  We managed to eat almost a whole large pizza!  Then we decided to take a “little walk” to find the church we remembered seeing “somewhere down the road” in 2005.    Well, make that a 45 minute walk–we DID find the church, but then it was 45 minutes walk back PLUS the walk back to the Saufleys, and the sun had gone down before we were back at Hiker Heaven.  We found Donna Saufley and asked if we could stay for one more day so we could go to church  on Sunday, and she said, “Sure!”  We were glad of that, because the new Hiker Heaven rule is, “You may stay here for two neros and a zero, then you have to move on.” 

So we are back in our cots in the big white tent, looking forward to one more nice zero day.  And I’m done with sewing, so I can really make it a zero instead of a work day!  And I am so glad for JJ, too! 

Walk to Rivendell: In Rivendell!

Tags: Hiker Heaven, REI