SUMMARY:  This morning the town of Lincoln was full of grey, bitter cold (32 degrees) ground fog. We’d had an awesome breakfast at Lambkin’s restaurant—the waitress could not believe how much we ate! But all day we had our eye on the sky, wondering if we’d done the right thing by staying another day. The morning improved tremendously—some blue sky and sun. Several hikers went back to the trail.

All that changed in the afternoon—the dark clouds were back and rain began to fall. Now, we were glad to stay in town! And, a whole bunch more hikers came in, looking exhausted, all their gear sopping wet, with tales of their adventures in the snow. Whew!

DETAILS:  By 6:00 am, I was wide awake and my stomach was growling, but too bad–the restaurants don’t open till 7:00.  At 6:55, we stepped outside into a very cold (I checked the thermometer–32 degrees!) and very foggy morning.  It was a ground fog, so we couldn’t even see much down the street.  But our breakfast (at Lambkin’s) was awesome.  The waitress didn’t think I would be able to eat everything I ordered: a huge cinnamon roll, sliced into 4 pieces and cooked like french toast, plus scrambled eggs and bacon.  She was shocked when I finished it all.   Fixit also ate a lot!

I stopped by the grocery store to see what they had so that I could make a plan for our food the rest of the way to Benchmark Ranch (2 1/2 days, hopefully).  Then I emptied and cleaned out our pack food bags and figured out what I needed for lunch today plus a bit more stuff to hike on tomorrow.  Fixit and I took a stroll to see the cute Baptist Church nearby, then we stopped at the grocery store before going back to the motel.  We had just returned, when there was a knock at the door–the motel owner was standing there, looking very dismayed.  “I am so sorry,” she said.  “We need to shut off all the water for the whole building for 2 or 3 days, starting now.  We knew we had a water leak somewhere, and my husband just found it, and it’s in the main water line, so we have to shut off all the water.  We’ll refund your money you already paid for tonight.”  She was very flustered and I assured her it would be OK.

Fixit and I walked down the street to the next motel, and hooray, they had a vacancy–probably due to the crummy weather, otherwise they would have been full of bowhunters.  Fixit said, “Well, if there was no place to stay, we could just go back to the trail.”  We had already seen four hikers headed for the trail this morning–they’d taken a zero day yesterday and said they were bored with town.  One young couple had bought a box of black plastic garbage bags to use for pack covers in case the weather went bad, and they couldn’t use them all, so I took two for Fixit and I.

As the morning progressed, the fog lifted, the clouds broke up and the sun started to come out.  “Maybe we could have gone back to the trail, too,” we thought.  Oh well.  For lunch we ate our usual zero day fare:  all the stuff we miss having on the trail–fresh fruit, yogurt, avocados and juice.  Then I left Fixit in the motel room (he was reading the “Montana Christian Journal” newspaper I’d found in a rack at the motel office) because I wanted to see if I could find a trail map for “The Bobs”.  Our Bear and Ley maps only show the CDT, and I was worried about having to bail out due to weather or something, and I wanted a more complete map “picture.”

I had just started walking when I met a whole big group of CDT hikers who had just come off the trail.  They had gotten the one room left at our motel and were sharing it.  They were  busy unloading their packs and spreading wet, soggy gear all over the place in the sun to dry.  They looked pretty haggard, and told me some epic tales about their adventures in the snowstorm that drove Fixit and I off the trail.  Basically what they did, once they realized that the storm was pretty bad, was they just stopped and hunkered in their tents all day and all night.  This morning things were better, so they packed up and made it to Rodgers Pass, then hitched down here.

I went to a store down the street that’s sort of half “guy” stuff (fish & hunt) and half “girl” stuff (party decorations and sewing).  I hoped they might have a map of The Bobs.  They didn’t, but phoned around to find one…and found out that it cost $10 at the ranger station way down the road.  I didn’t want to walk all that way, or pay that much, so I ended up just talking to the store owner.  She’s a Christian, and a widow (as of a year ago), 74 years old and trying to manage on her own.  She’s thinking about moving back to Oregon, where she and her husband were originally from.

When I stepped out of the store to go back to the motel, wow, the weather had changed fast.  Dark clouds were moving in, and it was turning very cold.  Shortly after that, the rain began again.  Fixit and I looked at it and said, “Whew, glad we did NOT go back to the trail today!”

We had a good dinner (steak and potatoes) at one of the restaurants, then back at the motel I rigged the black plastic garbage bags onto our packs.  Tomorrow I hope the weather will improve–we need to get back to the trail!  Canada is calling!