I hiked to the Seneca Lake trail junction, which is the start of a long side trip to a campground where you can hitch into Pinedale.  I passed several beautiful lakes where I wanted to go swimming, but it just didn’t seem all that fun by myself so I kept going.

Animal has a bad case of Giardia or something.  He said he was up at least 10 times last night.  This has slowed him down quite a bit and I’ve been catching up with him all day.  We ran into a ranger woman at one point (very rare!) and she immediately recognized us as thru hikers.  Animal asked “How?”  She said “Are you kidding?  You all wear too-short shorts, the same kinds of running shoes, and the ultralite packs”.  Well, ok, I guess. 🙂

A bit later I ran into none other than Gaucho coming the other way.  I couldn’t believe my eyes and was momentarily confused.  Why was he going the other way?  Then I realized I was on the side trail to Pinedale and he was coming back to the trail from Pinedale.  It was really great to see him, although a little sad because he was going the other way.  He said I didn’t look good and need to take better care of myself.  That’s how I feel, but I didn’t know it showed.  I really need a break for a couple of days.

Townie, Animal and I eventually made it to the trailhead where we waited for an hour to get a ride.  It was really quiet there even though there were a lot of cars in the parking lot.  There just wasn’t a lot of people coming or going.  Eventually a couple in a pickup let us jump in the back and we rode into Pinedale.  All of us were so happy in the back of the truck.  The weather was warm and the scenery was beautiful, and I just love riding in the back of pickups.

I stayed at Gannett Peak Lodge – a really nice and friendly place. After getting settled in I walked over to the Mexican food restaurant (Los Cabos) for an awesome dinner. There was a bunch of Spanish speaking construction dudes out front having a good time. I figured that was a good sign that the food would be good and I wasn’t disappointed.