Brian’s Microblog

July 11, 2026

We slept in until 7:00. It had been another night of stormy winds starting around 9:30 and going on for quite a while. Apparently it also rained at some point, and it was quite chilly - the tent was wet inside and out in the morning. We could tell the sun was getting closer to coming over the ridge so we stayed in bed a little while longer until the sun hit the tent, then got up. Some damp things had frozen overnight. Neither of us felt like we had slept very well.

We got on trail at 9:30. The trail passes the smaller upper Hancock Lake and then climbs steeply up to a saddle.

The view on the other side is dramatic, with some huge, spiky cliffs above some beaver dam lakes.

The trail going down doesn’t bother with switchbacks and is quite steep in places, but mellows out after a while and follows down the valley.

Eventually we reached the Boss Lake trailhead. From there we walked a bit over a mile out to Highway 50 on a rough road.

We checked the Monarch Lodge which said it was open, but no one was at the front desk and no response to the radio/intercom they had. We walked a ways further to the Butterfly House hiker hostel where we expected to find a resupply box my dad had mailed several days earlier. They didn’t have the box and most of the rooms were taken.

We had hoped to stay at the hostel but the vibe was weirder than we expected. Also in past years they had a food cart there, but this time the only food they had was frozen pizzas from their freezer for $10. We wouldn’t have anything for breakfast. We decided Salida would be more comfortable so we started hitchhiking.

Michelle, who had been out mountain biking, picked us up and drove us to a motel in Poncha Springs. It had a “No Vacancy” sign so she drove us to another one in Salida that some friends of hers had stayed at. We got out of her truck but, by the time she turned around in the parking lot, we found it had no vacancy either. Michelle was willing to drive us to another one, but the manager came out and said his brother’s motel had one room available and it was about a block away. This was like a chauffeur service, especially compared to our previous hitch.

We checked in to the Salida Inn and Monarch Suites and did some sink laundry so we would have something clean to put on after showering.

With internet we discovered our resupply box had been sent to Kansas for some reason. There is a Salida ZIP code on the box, but maybe Salinas vs Salida? USPS was very, very confused - the next day the box arrived in Anchorage, Alaska!

We walked a few blocks to Soulcraft Brewing for dinner. We watched the last part of the World Cup game where England beat Norway.

Back at the motel we watched Argentina beat Switzerland and ate some ice cream sandwiches from the gas station for dessert.

About 8 miles for the day.