Brian’s Microblog

July 20, 2026

We slept until 6:30, unfortunately not as well as we hoped - maybe it was a bit too warm in our room. Julie walked down to the Lake City Bakery and came back with several delicious pastries and a couple savory pastries/pockets. We ate the sweet pastries and saved most of the savory ones for lunch.

We walked down to Hiker Center to check the hiker boxes. We found a couple of ziplock bags and a small deodorant. We also picked up our clean clothes - it felt like valet service! Then we walked to the north end of town to the grocery store to shop for supplies. We found most of what we needed.

We brought the groceries back to the motel and then visited the nearby Hiker Center again to back-flow our water filter with the Sawyer syringe they had - hopefully that will speed up the filter a bit. Then we borrowed their loaner bicycles to ride down to the south end of town. The bikes were not great but it was easier than walking. We found an “add boiling water” dinner at the sporting goods store, then got a bottle of wine and some beers from the liquor store.

After dropping those off at the motel we returned the bikes. Then we ate the pocket/calzones for lunch and relaxed in the room for a while. We got some bills paid and emails looked at. Our WiFi at home had stopped working so we asked our caretaker to check on the battery backup.

We walked a couple blocks to the main old town shopping area and went to the Michael Underwood photography gallery. He has captured a lot of amazing photos from the area. We bought some stickers and small souvenirs and, because Michael recognized us as through hikers, we each got small free stickers.

As we walked (and biked) around town we kept running into other hikers. It is interesting and fun to be in a small town where we don’t know anyone, yet constantly find people we recognize. Lake City also clearly has a lot of community organization. For example, there is a swampy pond at the north end of town that has a trail with benches and a picnic table that was clearly a volunteer effort.

We found that most of the rooms at our motel are filled with other hikers and we chatted with them. The rooms have folding chairs for their tiny patios and in the afternoon many of us were sitting outside. There were several rain showers in the afternoon and it was pleasantly cooling - the rooms don’t have air conditioning.

It turns out that many of the rooms with hikers had been reserved by others, but with the Elk Fire causing the town to be in level one evacuation, most reservations had been canceled. That is, we might have had to stay somewhere else, but the fire actually helped us. Similarly, many reviews of the Lake City Bakery mention long lines, but Julie never had to wait.

For dinner we walked to the north end of town to the Silver Slice pizzeria. It is a small operation but they make very good pizza!

After dinner we found canopy tents being set up in the old downtown area for a what looks like a craft fair, and there was live music at the Packer Saloon and Cannibal Grill so we wandered around a little.