Day 86; Sat July 21 2007

(Stud) We hitched out of Burney around 9:00 this morning. It took us longer hitching out than coming in, but still not more than 20 minutes. Just after we started to hitch we met an interesting fellow--probably in his 60's. I believe he said his name was Thomas George. He started talking to us because we were hitching. "My Toyota p/u broke down several years ago and I get away the same way you do". He told us he'd only ever had 2 problems [hitching]: once a truck swerved off the road and tried to hit him and once a truck ran over his bag that was sitting on the side of the road. "Probably because of my color", he said. I asked him what nationality he was--his skin was light brown and he did not have an accent I was familiar with. "I'm from right here" he said and he gave 4 geographic points that were the boundary for his people--the Pit River Indians. "I'm a man of many
colors", he said. "I've been lower than the lowest rung on the ladder and was the town drunk for 14 years." More recently he'd represented the Pit River Nation in congretional hearings where several different native american tribes were going up against commercial interests to fight geothermal development at Medicine Lake. I recalled later that he never used the term "Native American" during any part of our discussion which was much more lenghty than what I have witten here. You meet some interesting people on the trail.

The ~7 mile hike to Burney Falls State Park was nearly flat. I took 3 ibuprofin (600mg) just before we left, and the shins didn't feel too bad--certainly better than coming into Burney a day and 1/2 ago.

At the State Park we had lunch at a picnic table next to the new general store--a nice log structure. The park was busy with weekend tourists. Dwight got a couple of hotdogs at the store (since we planned to have lunch there--but I had plenty in my food bag so I just ate out of it). We both got supersized soft drinks and icecream since we just can't seem to get enough of this stuff on the trail.

After lunch the terrain was more rolling. I took another 3 ibuprofin (the pharmacist advised me not to take over 2400mg per day). Once we got to the dam at Britton Lake we reached the section of the trail where we have no maps or data page. Are only reference is Yogi's pages which just briefly mention water sources along the way. But this section is well marked with triangular metal blazes, so we have not had problems with route finding.

I'd guess we hiked about 20 miles today.