Brian’s Microblog

July 21, 2026

We had stayed up somewhat late and didn’t get up until 6:30. Julie walked to the Lake City Bakery again and brought us pastries for breakfast and some calzones to freeze for our next dinner on trail.

We showered and Julie checked the Hiker Center for hand sanitizer and checked that we could get a ride to the trail tomorrow. I added a couple days text and photos to the blog.

We ate lunch of leftover pizza. Then we walked to a path along Henson Creek that goes down to where it meets the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.

We stopped at the craft fair but there wasn’t anything we were interested in. We went to the Kennedy Dry Goods store - one of the volunteers at the hiker dinner owns the store. We bought some San Juan Shortbread for the trail. Julie got a spare pika sticker from Michael Underwood Photography.

We stopped by the Hiker Center again and one of the volunteers suggested we try a mango smoothie from Cafe 98. They were right: it was a great treat, really fresh.

We walked to the Post Office to send a postcard and mail some of the souvenirs we’d purchased home. Then we visited the Lake City Bakery to get breakfast for the next day as well as a lunch and some desserts and breakfasts for the trail.

The town felt different because all the through hikers we knew had left in the morning and only a couple new ones had arrived. It seemed like maybe more of the tourists who might have canceled reservations had come to town.

Back at the motel I worked on the blog again and enjoyed a couple of the beers we’d bought the day before. We got New Belgium’s Honey Orange Tripel - really tasty, but I really felt the 10% alcohol content. Hopefully not too many errors in the blog!

For dinner we walked the block to the Packer Saloon and Cannibal Grill. It’s a bit “tourist trap” but the food is good. (Alfred Packer bio if you don’t know why it’s the Cannibal Grill.)

Back at the motel I continued to work on updating the blog while Julie studied the script for the musical Into the Woods.