Day Sixteen, Gathering Steam

Today I put in a leisurely eighteen miles and am none the much worse to show for it. No records were broken but my toes stayed in line and it is another small chunk off the whole. I am healing or learning to conquer my pain. I may be at last growing stronger. I had been weakening for the past several days and it had me a little concerned.

I woke up early in a motel room, wondering just where I was. That's a feeling I had not yet had on trip. It was for a few moments frightening. I calmed my nerves with a sandwich and a jug of ice cold root beer. Both of these I had bought the day before on the shores of Soap Lake, Washington.

The sandwich came from an interesting place, the European Grocery/Deli. It is run by a couple from Ukraine. His English was thin; hers was a bit better; they were friendly people both. They had a display case bursting with sausages and cheeses and all manner of delicacies. There were cookies and crackers and tins of meat, all labelled in cyrillic. There was chocolate and ice cream and everything good. It all seemed so very exotic. It reminded me of one of those special stores in Soviet Russia where only the top party bosses were allowed to shop, while everyone else stood in endless lines for single rolls of rough toilet paper.

Anyway, so nourished, I was out the door at eleven, or what I've come to think of as "hotel time". I was not at all eager to begin. Yesterday had been a terrible day and I was in no mood for more of that. As it was, my toes did sting for the first couple miles and I did have an unhappy ankle. I was carrying a good gallon and a half of water, a good deal more than I needed. I had filled my jugs at a public spigot in town and only realised too late that what I had got was the healing water of Soap Lake. It is said it will cure you of just about anything, specifically Buerger's disease, but it tastes like Elliott Bay at low tide.

With that dumped out I still had a half gallon of good water and my pack was eight pounds lighter. I felt great. There was for the first time in days a small spring in my step as I followed highway seventeen up past Soap Lake, Little Soap Lake, Lenore Lake, Alkali Lake, Blue Lake and Park Lake. Some two million years ago they were all part of one mighty river. They are long and narrow and run between high crumbling rock cliffs. There is no one on them but a few fishermen here and there and a few thousand squawking gulls. The road runs right along the water. It is a starkly beautiful place. I am glad I came this way.

I stopped to talk to Jimmy and Ralph, fishermen from Auburn, Washington. They each had a tiny pontoon boat, powered by an electric motor. From them I learned that fish very much like creamed corn but it is not sporting to give them any. They gave me good advice for my trip. "You're going to die," said Jimmy. He repeated it several times.

At the Blue Lake Resort RV Park, an oasis, a paradise, I met Karen and her husband Donald, retired truck drivers from Vashon Island, the scene of my earliest memory. They came with Heidi, their tiny little dog, to do a little fishing themselves. From Karen I learned that President Obama is just ruining the country and that you can't trust anyone living east of the Mississippi. Best of luck to all you guys.

Find me now in Sun Lake State Park, camping, I guess, illegally. I wanted to go to the campground but it would have meant following a little road down to the bottom of a hill I had just spent an hour walking up. Sorry guys, I know you need the money. I just didn't have the heart.

DISCOVERED: A new mammal, a small brown ferret-like creature, yet undiscovered by man. "Oh, those are rockchucks," a lady told me. I was going to call them 'James weasels'.

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