Burning the midnight oil recovering files at a truck stop

As the cafe at Target closed, I asked someone if they could suggest a place with wifi where I might be able to work late into the night with my power-hungry laptop that had power plugs for customer use (noting that the McDonalds I'd tried didn't have power plugs.) The person mentioned there was a Pilot trucker's stop one exit north on I5.  Sure enough, the "travel center" there had an area set up for laptop use.  Unfortunately, the wifi you have to pay for. (not much - $2 per hour, but I'm "passing" on that option at the moment - I did buy a 6" subway sandwich.)

So I started copying another CF card: 2 down, at least 3 more to go to ensure I can hike for about 5 more days - but I'd have to constrain my shooting - fewer pano's and "focus-stacked" sets, and delete my duds on the spot. Each 32gb seems to take me about 40 minutes to copy. I'll be here til midnight.

Then I'll probably head back to where I thought I would be, at Mt Ashland, which is NF land where I hope to find a spot fairly "close-in" whee I can park to sleep in my car and not be bothered if I sleep past sunrise.

But I'll be a bit wasted tomorrow, so doubt I'll do the bicycle ride then. Unfortunate, because it is forecast to start warming up and I wanted to be bicycling and climbing out of Seiad Valley before it started getting oppressive at lower elevations.  So, maybe if I don't feel too tired I'll just push it, though it would be later in the day, thus hotter, more exhausting.

I could also do some of the shorter day-hike relay-loops that I'm planning to work my way down from the Mt Ashland area to I5 and a bit beyond. This is the section where the trail and road 20 weave back & forth across each other.  I'm planning a series of short generally downhill bike rides and hike back to my car.  Just an even more fragmented version of what I'm doing overall.

But more likely, I'll finish some other loose off-trail ends such as downloading my track logs, finish activating my new phone plan, and maybe finish backing up everything I have along (closing the barn door now that the horses are out of the barn!)

Ironically, I had been worrying about something similar happening while I was on the trail last, one reason I was so eager to make it back that I did a bit of a night-hike: it revolved around some second-guessing for having chosen not to leave my car with the people from the Seiad Cafe, instead choosing to leave my car at the Grider Creek FS campground a few miles south up the hill, which would save me a long road-walk. But, I was worried that I thereby chose to risk my "unattended" car being vandalized, my laptop and disk drives gone.  How ironic that I now find myself with the worsed part of that scenario's consequence, via a different scenario.

I also need to start planning which of two options I take in July. After making it to Oregon, do I just keep going, or do I now "finish up" California by coming back and finishing up the Tuolumne to hwy 50 section I skipped last year due to the fire/smoke.  The timing would seem to be coincidentally optimal for coming back, since I could also meet up with the little CNPS group, spearheaded this year by Betsy L) planning again this year the weekend around July 11th what they planned last year before being chased north by the Hunter's fire as well: a campout at Woods Lake just below Carson Pass, which for me would be "on the way" from Sonora Pass to Hwy 50.  If I time it right.  I would need to send my full bear canister to the Tuolumne PO some time fairly soon. But main trick is to accurately predict how many days the hike from Sonora Pass to Woods lake will take, so I make it there about when they arrive there.  I'd maybe want to arrange for one of them to become "trail angels" to me: "supply me" some extra food for the few days I'm with them (I'd want to pay them for that of course.)

So now I'm almost done backing up four of my 32gb CF cards, and it's almost midnight.  I'll call that good enough for today.  I'll probably take the "short bicycle loop" option tomorrow. and finish off the evening again cleaning up loose off-trail ends, including posting this.

[edit: as I'm post-date posting this the following evening, here's an update: I did end up overnighting at the "Grouse Gap" PCT trailhead on Road 20 just south of Mt Ashland.  Woke up to frost on everything in the morning, deciding I probably wouldn't be warming myself up soon enough to do some productive bicycling/hiking early morning, so decided to see whether I breakfast at Callahan's might provide me an opportunity to use my laptop, if they had power plugs conveniently available.  Ah the power of rationalization.]