Journey Day 367 | CDT Day 30

Hiking into Basin, Montana, in 1987.

A typically wasted day in town. I was first up, quickly stumbling over to the Safeway for provisions and breakfast (two quarts of milk, raisin bread and cream cheese). Back in the rooms, the others are headed to breakfast as I watch TV, talk with Mom. It's a good call, except news of Larry Burak's suicide lingers to make the day a sad one. He was once a good friend and an especially good person. But time must be battled...

We check out, head to laundry. Talk with a local, an historian avidly into the outdoors. No fuel, but nice talk as the clothes turn. Leonard, Laurie and Carl catch ride to the post office I miss by walking ahead. But the KOA sign give me strength to plunder the grounds and I find free fuel from the first I asked, two girls from Massachusetts headed that day to Glacier. It's been about a month since we'd started there. On to the post office, get mail despite no lobby hours. People are kool!

Resupplied, we hike to main drag of shopping stores. Another Bob Ward's, I pass, the others buy and browse. On down the street, we enjoy pig-out at Ray's Cafe, as waitress races about overworked. We're headed down the street to movie (to kill time until we start hitching out to campground) when Liz and Ed Tuckler, Leonard and Laurie's friends from the Appalachian Trail, drive up all the way from the Black Hills. What luck, we nearly missed them. Instead we congregate by store, talk, they eat. Movie time: Dragnet a disappointment for me, Inner Space apparently good for the others.

Tired out to camp, I head immediately to tent Leonard put up. A cold night at roadside campground, apprehensive on a Saturday night.