Day 54: 1007 to 1018.5

11.5 miles.

Today was a quick hike up to Sonora Pass and highway 108.

Once at the road, I met a hiker named Sunshine Ray. Apparently I passed him yesterday at some point when he took a wrong trail at a junction. He is one of 2 deaf hikers out in trail right now.

We tried hitchhiking for about 45 minutes with no luck. Finally 2 guys came down from a dayhike and they offered us a ride.

The 10 miles sown the pass was amazing. I had never seen a road like this in California. The mountains on all sides towered above the twisting road. It looked like a mountain pass in Europe that they race the Tour on.

They dropped us off at Kennedy Meadows resort. This is a different place than the Kennedy Meadows I was at right before entering the Sierras.

I immediately went to the restaurant and got a huge burger. My stomach isn't the bottomless pit it was when I got off trail in June. But this burger hit the spot.

I had a resupply package sent to Kennedy Meadows....but it was sent in June. Fortunately it was still there. Everything was still good. Even the tortillas, but I had some leftover from the last section so I used those instead.

Around 7pm, sunshine ray and I tried to hitch back to the pass so we could camp there and get an early start in the morning. As we were standing by the road, a family on bikes rode up and asked us about the trail. They left and we continued to wait for a car...we saw one car in the 45 minutes.....just as we were about to give up, the dad from the family who talked to us drives up and offers to take us to the pass. It is amazing how friendly people can be.

Sunshine ray has been hiking my pace so he wants to join me for a bit. We do most of our conversations on a pad of paper. We have a long day planned tomorrow.