Day 39: Independence, CA (0.0 miles - 788.9)

June 15, 2016 - I got no sleep last night, maybe 4 hours. I was so wide awake and my brain would not shut off. I talked to the group later and they said they had the same problem, must have something with being over 10,000 feet for 5 days then coming down to 4,000 feet.

We all packed up camp and walked back into town. We were able to score a hotel room for the 6 of us, 6 ways makes for a cheap stay. After getting cleaned up it was off to Bishop some 40 miles down the road.

I had 2 options to get to Bishop, bus or hitch. The problem with the bus is that it doesn’t run much in the morning, 6:30am & 8:45am. Then the earliest a bus would be back to Independence would be 2:30pm. We figured just take the 8:45am bus then hitch back since it wouldn’t take long to buy food.

I got to the bus stop around 8:20am and don’t see anyone, so I figure those guys just hitch on. 8:45am comes and went and still no bus. Then by 9am I figured they canceled the bus so I decided to hitch. Didn’t take long as the couple that brought us into town yesterday drove by and stopped. They were only going to Big Pine so the hitch was only going to get me halfway. I decide to go with them anyways since I knew there would be a bus stop there as well and could still hitch. The guy I was waiting at the bus stop with decided to pass and wait for the bus. They drop me off in Big Pine and I waited a few minutes and saw no bus so I tried to hitch, again it didn’t take long. A section hikers was heading home so had no problem taking me to Bishop.

I got into Bishop and went to the outfitter to buy some new hiking gloves and fuel for Wisecrack. Then I walked to the supermarket and ended up running into Batman and Salty, the guys I was going to ride the bus with. I was right and they ended up hitching. So they waited for me to buy my food then we went back to the highway to hitch back. We found what looked like a good spot and Batman had a sign saying “hikers to Independence”. Took a little longer but a guy pulled into the parking lot and said he will give us a ride. The guy was very nice and we all spent the ride time by talking football.

The rest of the day was basically just laying in bed eating food and watching tv, got to get rested up before hitting those hard Sierra sections.

View of the Sierras from the motel in Independence, CA