Photo: View of Women's face in mountain Dyer

Yeti and I stayed a couple of more nights in Dyer at the RV park. The managers were super friendly. On Sunday, Mother’s Day, Charlene brought us delicious breakfast sandwiches. They made the stay very nice. It is so much nicer when the hosts are exceptional as Charlene and Mr. Ed were.

Jac was hiking up in the mountains and would come out on Highway 6 about 40 miles west of Tonapah. Tonapah is a bigger town with most services including a full grocery store, laundry, post office, motels and a few eateries. It’s not fancy, but is a old mining town and we thought that there was still mining activity to keep the town alive.

We drove from Dyer to Tonapah a day ahead of Jac’s arrival. We checked into the motel and had a great meal at the Brewery – one of the better places in town for food. While we had time, we scoped out where the good coffee place was (important for me!), the coin laundry (in the casino motel/rv park!), and other potential eateries. Jac was planning to stay at the hostel, which was directly behind our motel.

Next day, we followed Jac’s progress via the Garmin and got to the spot she’d come out on the road. It’s so great to have that device so we can time the meet up just right. Jac arrived as scheduled and we all drove back into town. We inquired about the hostel and it turned out that it was no longer being operated as a hostel but was being used as employee housing. So, Jac bunked in with us – we had a room with two Queen beds. Jac was taking a zero day with us so she could plan her resupply for the trail ahead now that she’d be on her own.

These were all Jac’s town chores: get restaurant meal (Brewery again), grocery shopping, packing a resupply box to send ahead to Lovelock, laundry, and maybe a bit of resting!

It was a bit bittersweet to spend the last days with our Desert Trail pal. We’d miss Jac, but we needed to get home to get Yeti checked out. We had lunch at the Strawberry Diner which was good – lots of leftovers as the portions were generous.

The next morning, we headed out to the trail at Highway 6. We said our goodbyes and off she went into the desert. A solo hiker again.

Yeti and I headed to Boise to visit Mike and Chris and the two dogs. I was happy to see my four-legged and two-legged friends. Chris and I did a nice hike in the hills around Boise the following day. Their garden was started and already producing greens. Mike made tamale pie…our favorite. We stayed two nights before leaving for Montana.

Arrived home late afternoon on a Saturday. It was good to be home and out of the car! It’s a long day of driving and the trip had lots of driving too…so I’m happy to be in a house where I can walk places and not be sitting in a car! It turned out to be a great trip even though it was not as planned. We will miss Jac but will follow her as she reports in on her progress. Now the big chore of unpacking!