An Improvement in Health but not in Attitude :-) – 21 July

Trevor slept for close on 20 hours, waking up only to take meds and a bit of ice cream. When he woke at 6 this morning the fever has broken and he reached for his phone to read the news. For those of you not knowing Trevor that well: he needs to ALWAYS know what’s happening in the world, the fact that he went for 20 hours without reading the news is a sure indication of how terrible he felt.

We took a short walk from the motel to get coffee and a simple breakfast. Again I am stunned how a coffeehouse which also serves breakfasts can be staffed by one person. He takes the order, makes the coffee, prepares the breakfast and takes the payment. During the time we were there he served us and another hiker and two other couples, calmly and effectively without anybody getting impatient.

We came back to the motel and after an hour’s rest we got a lift to the Walmart centre where Trevor had his hair cut ($18 for a shave which was done quicker than it took me to get a Starbucks coffee next door!!! 3 mins max)

We spent the afternoon resting and then walked down to Main Street to have an early dinner. His appetite hasn’t fully returned but he managed to get through a fair portion of the meal and then a single scoop ice cream.

A lot of people grabbed their phones to take a picture when this truck drove down the road, parked, and the driver and his partner hopped out to go into one of the restaurants:

Trevor autocratically decided we are going back to the trail tomorrow. I investigated the option for us to slackpack for 2 days, and had the opportunity to have half our stuff (some of our food and our warm gear) sent on to Manchester (65km away) to make our packs lighter for the next 2 or 3 days, but he felt it’s all too complex so we will just set off normally tomorrow in the same way we have always done. I am not totally happy as I wanted him to rest another day, or for us to carry lightly. However, we do have enough food to allow us doing only half our normal mileage and still get to the next town without running out of food, so we will just take it very easy.

I am unsure what cell phone signal will be for next few days.