After the past couple of nights with troubled sleep this spot was amazing. Sad to leave such a good spot. Can’t they all be like this? I woke a couple times during the night and could see God’s amazing star show from my bag. Too cool.
The Trail heading towards Warden
Had issues with tumbleweeds completely covering the trail today. We could see a canal close so we bushwhacked over to it and walked along side it until we were past the tumbleweeds. I wonder how the horse and wagon riders deal with them…
There’s a trail down there somewhere.
Walking along the canal.
More exciting was our badger encounter. I was off in la-la land like can sometimes happen. Coyote said something and when I looked here comes a badger right towards them on the trail. When I saw it my first thought was, “Oh crap, it’s coming for the dog!” It was that close. He must not have seen us either because right at that moment he turned and took off back down the trail. He stayed out ahead of us for a good long while too. Glad that worked out.
Snakey!
We eventually got to Warden, and noticed that Wylie was picking up ticks again. He’d been tick free for several days so that seemed a bit odd. Maybe he found them when we hiked along the canal.
Welcome to Warden
We went straight to the post office to verify our resupply boxes were there. They were. Asked about where to eat and the guys at the post office basically said there were only two choices. The Corral Restaurant, or Subway in the grocery. We went to the Corral and ordered burgers.
Across the street from the Corral was City Hall. Coyote went in to ask about possibly camping in town and wasn’t pleased with the response. Basically no camping allowed at all and we needed to keep moving. Kind of a weird vibe, not real friendly. So after eating at the nice gazebo grassy area right next door to the city hall we decided to get our boxes and get out.
We tossed around the idea of zeroing again to heal up blisters. It would also help waste some time so we didn’t arrive at the Yakima Firing Range too early to camp at the trailhead. We were nailed down to a specific date to cross the firing range, with the Army’s permission to camp at both trailheads. We weren’t really looking forward to the next section anyway since live rail starts in Warden and we would have to walk the road detour. In my research I’d found a canal detour here that sounded much better than the road, so that’s what we were planning, a canal road walk to Othello. Once in Othello we could zero and then walk the road to at least Royal City where the live rail stopped and we could continue on through the Crab Creek section.
We finally decided to continue with the canal walk and went to get our boxes. But then in going through our resupply it became apparent we needed to send things home. So we’re going to pay to send stuff home? And pay to zero in Othello? I live about 40 miles to the south… let’s just go home, heal up, and save the money.
So that is exactly what we did.
&c. 