Tuesday June 17, 9.8mi/15.8km

Eureka (942.9/6460ft) to Diamond Spring (952.7/8330ft) (NV)

I had a relaxing morning at the motel, first going down to the lobby to enjoy their free breakfast, which had pancakes and fruit and yogurt and even real juice. Then I went back to my room and had a final shower, and then making second breakfast in the little kitchenette room. Totino’s pizza rolls with applesauce and chocolate milk, those are breakfast foods right? I got my new shoes from the hotel manager, corporate policy didn’t allow me to ship them to the motel, but she nicely offered to ship it to her personal address and brought them into work.

There’s quite a difference in the rubber tread!

The previous pair I got in Ojai, which was over 600 trail miles ago. I checked out of the hotel at 11am, walked back down the Main Street to the Owl Cafe for lunch. Most of what they had was hamburgers, but I managed to find a chicken sandwich on the menu. Afterwards I went to the library to update my journal, and do some research on the upcoming Idaho Centennial Trail (in Idaho, the Hot Springs Trail basically follows the ICT). Once I get to the Idaho border, I might flip up to the northern border and then hike southbound through the state, possibly avoiding some hot weather and/or wildfires. I said goodbye to the librarian, who seemed very nice but not very educated, she hadn’t even heard of the upcoming Juneteenth holiday, which I think we’ve been celebrating for 6 years now. On my final walk through town I passed this fascinating vending machine, which sold USB chargers, snacks, and sodas…but warm sodas.

It was an easy walk out of town on a series of dirt roads, and even a really faint two-track road that I had to squint to see. But it was there!

That I was back on a decent two-track road for the rest of the afternoon, gradually climbing up to 8,500 ft elevation.

Once I got above 7,500 ft the trees disappeared as usual.

I arrived to Diamond Spring and confirmed it had water flowing, and then backtracked a minute to a flat-ish spot to camp. I had a pretty good view from my campsite.

I will fill up my 6 liter capacity at the spring in the morning, and then I have a 33 mile dry stretch of trail. And based on reading the journals of previous hikers like Buck30 and Krista/Eric, I knew this upcoming 33 mile stretch over the Diamond mountains would be tough and slow. So I’ll be fine, just a little thirsty by the end.