Day 69: (18 miles)
Day 70: (Zero #17)

It’s Mammoth day! It’s Mammoth day!  One more day of unpleasant toes!  Better yet, cell service!  We call our kids and catch up.  Our son tells us a as friend of ours from home is in Mammoth and might be able to meet us.  Yeah!  No hitch required.  We also hit 900 miles today.  It just so happened that a couple was passing by when we got to the 900 mark and offered to take our picture, as it is rare to have photographic evidence of us two actually in the same place.  Funny though, they asked us what the significance of 900 was.  Hmmm.  It was all Paul could do not to say, ‘oh nothing really, just the number of bodies we’ve stashed on the trail’, but he politely explained the PCT and the miles we’ve walked and still have to go.  Silly JMT’ers.  Since the shuttle isn’t yet running from Reds Meadows into Mammoth we decide to take the Horseshoe Lake trail into Mammoth.  Reds Meadows would have been so much shorter and easier on our seriously unpleasant feet as our shoes still feel too small (short).  We are in luck, for just as we are walking down into the parking lot at Horseshoe Lake the phone rings, it’s Dan.  “Where are you guys?”  Just coming into the lot now we tell him. “Cool”, he responds. Dan greets us and says, “not sure if you wanted one, but I thought I’d bring you each a beer…just in case”. Church music plays in our heads…angels sing. The pain of/in the feet goes away immediately… or at least dissipates enough not to care at the moment.  We are unsure on where we want to Zero, but we definitely want a place with a jacuzzi so we can soak our tired bodies.  Dan suggests the Sierra Nevada Resort and Spa…little pricey, but we don’t care as they have what we want and everything is in walking or shuttle distance.  The best part is even though our room wasn’t ready, they allowed us to soak in the jacuzzi (12 foot diameter) till it was ready. Must have been an interesting sight to see two stinky hikers walk onto the pool deck, drop their backpacks and strip down to skivvies and plop themselves in the jacuzzi and soak.  Finally Clean!

Day 70:  We sleep in…till 7 am. Paul gets up and gets the laundry done. I’m trying to catch up on emails and our blog.  Once laundry is done we hobble over to breakfast and then to the outfitters for new footwear.  Paul decides he’s gonna try ” trail runner” type shoes as they are lighter and more breathable and settles on Brooks Cascades (orange), and because they didn’t have he right size or selection of Salomon footwear, I get a pair of Merrill’s.  They are lighter and more breathable as well but are low cut which is a little unsettling for me as I am not very nimble on my feet.  Not my first choice, and they take a bit to break in as opposed to my Salomon’s, but my Crocs won’t get me very far, and my current boots are just too small.  We check with the post office on the off chance that our resupply package that was supposed to have been at Lake Isabella got forwarded to Mammoth.  This will allow us to not have to shop for food.  We’re in luck AGAIN!  The mangled box arrived, but no fishing pole or reel from my friend Donna (aka. Sister Mary Smart Ass).  Turns out the zip code she was given from her post office was incorrect and they got sent to Fresno instead. Crap!  Although we’ve been seeing lots of brook trout we really haven’t seen any of “good size” and in actuality we don’t have enough time in the day to spend time fishing.  We are however taking note of locations that we might go back to and spend some time…fishing.