Wednesday June 11, 7.6mi/12.2km
N Fork Birch Creek (859.0/7300ft) to Austin (859.0/6555ft) (NV) +7.6mi Austin spur
Usually on town days, I’m up earlier and excited to get to a restaurant and eat my face off. But the tiny Town of Austin doesn’t have anything open before 11am, so I lazily left my campsite just before 8am. I had another hour of gradual uphill hiking and then 4 miles of downhill into the town.
After I got over the highest point I could see down into the little town. The view reminded me strongly of descending into some of the little towns on the HRP/Pyrenees hike.
I got into town a little after 10am, and since no food establishments were open, I went to the post office and took care of that task.
I picked up my box of food, and my new tent (my old one finally died after 6,000 miles). As I walked through the town, I noticed most of the storefronts were closed. This little cafe still had their temporary closure sign from Covid-19.
And this convenience store appeared long out of business.
It was a cute little Main Street though, with the classic Western storefronts and the feel of an old mining town.
And they heavily advertised Highway 50, “the loneliest Road in America”.
Finally, it was 11am, and I walked into the International Cafe, which seemed to be neither of those words. They didn’t serve any International food or traditional cafe/breakfast food, only burgers and chicken wings.
The food was actually pretty decent and the server was friendly, and I especially appreciated the cheap cold drinks!
I spent an hour there eating and relaxing and then headed over to the hotel to try to check in early. It worked!
The room was a strange configuration with a secondary little bedroom off the main room. But it was very modern and seemed to be recently renovated. Lots of USB plugs, a waterfall shower, and a heat pump. I exploded the contents of my backpack all over the room and washed some clothes in the sink, and then unpacked my boxes from the post office. Delicious homemade peanut butter cookies in the food box!
I spent a couple hours planning the next parts of this trail, eating some snacks I got from the convenience store nearby, and watching old 2000s movies. High School Musical was on two different channels, fascinating. By 5pm I was pretty hungry so I went over to the other restaurant in town, Grandma’s.
I have been craving a salad all week so that was the first thing I ordered.
They had a pretty limited menu, and on some advice from the two hikers ahead of me (Eric and Krista) I ordered a pizza and it was legit really good.
It was called the ridiculous pizza and it had basically every topping on it. Except pineapple, because I’m not a heathen. As I was leaving dinner I ran into two other outdoorsy looking guys, so I chatted with them and learned that they are biking across the US on Highway 50. Pablo is from Madrid, and Gary is from DC, and they just met each other yesterday after a month on their journey.
It was really cool to meet other adventurers, we swapped a few stories and then went down the street to the convenience store where we each got some snacks or drinks. And of course I got ice cream! They finish about a week, at the Golden Gate bridge. Pretty cool! I went back to my motel room and started packing up stuff for tomorrow, while watching some more old movies.