Sunday June 29, 23.1mi/37.2km

Big Cedar Camp (981.8/2630ft) to Priest Lake State Park (958.7/2470ft) (ID)

I slept in a little bit and didn’t start hiking until 7am, tired from the last 3 days of traveling.

The beautiful cedar forest continued most of the morning.

This also seemed like a popular trail with all the boardwalks over the marshy areas.

After a couple hours I arrived at Upper Priest Lake, which was pretty quiet.

It’s surrounded by public land and there are no private homes on this lake, just campsites.

I followed the lakeshore for a couple miles, only seeing one boat pass by.

The miles were easy and scenic all morning.

By noon I could tell it was getting pretty warm, but every time I entered a dense forest, it was immediately much cooler.

And I was cooled further when I had to ford a shallow creek. Wet feet and legs are like natural air conditioning.

And then for the rest of the day I had a roadwalk, initially in the forest.

After a couple miles, the dirt road became paved, and I would see a car every 5 minutes or so. I had about 4 hours to hike to Indian Creek campground.

I arrived at the campground at 7pm, just after the camp store had closed. So no ice cream for me tonight.

I walked to one of the campground loops and sat at a picnic table and made dinner. While dinner was rehydrating, I recharged my phone and also tried to reserve a campsite. I was able to add 70% charge to my phone, but for the campsites I was not so fortunate. There were a few available but for some reason they wanted $62. So after dinner I hiked a half mile to the boundary of the park and camped in the forest. Who pays $62 to sleep on the ground? I’ve had motels that were cheaper than that. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to get up early as my choice of campsite is questionable, but that will give me time to check out the camp store and go for a swim in the lake.