Its time, TRT

It's Sunday morning. Yikes.

We have had a productive weekend! The drive from Phoenix went well, I picked up Zach right on time as planned and we made it safely to the small town of Kyburz, CA. Claire's family has an awesome cabin on the creek in Kyburz, and Zach, Topo and I held up there for one night.

On Friday we got up early and left the cabin to get our first look at Lake Tahoe. WOW...IT'S HUGE! We stopped in at the Echo Lake Store to try and leave a food cache with them, they informed us that the only food caches allowed in their storage room had to be mailed there (they are catering to the Pacific Crest Trail thru hikers). While we were there we met a PCT hiker. A 17 year old guy who had been on the trail for 1,100 miles and 4 months. He was taking the year between high school and college to hike the trail. Super nice guy, I hooked him up with some Power Bars, which he was excited about.

Our first food cache was placed in the woods near the Echo Summit store. From there, we headed for the East side of the lake to meet the owner of the dog boarding facility where Topo will go if he can't complete the hike. Then we moved north to place our next food cache at Spooner Summit.

After Spooner Summit we stopped in to the Tahoe Rim Trail Association office, met the ladies that had helped us with our planning and then opted to use one of the TRT Associations free bear canister for our hike.

From there, I made a quick phone to a lady that I had met only be phone as I planned the hike. She section hiked the TRT with her dog last year and lives only a few minutes from where the trail crosses the Mt. Rose Hwy. So Kathy and her 3 dogs met us up at Big Meadows and we took all the dogs for a short walk and went over the map with Kathy getting advice on different sections. THANKS KATHY! It was great to meet you!

After that we headed into Truckee to relax and have a cold one at the Brewery. I ended up boarding Topo at a dog kennel here in Truckee...sneaking him into the Hampton wasn't going to work (stinkin' surveillance cameras!).

Sunday was pretty uneventful. We got our last food cache placed at Barker Pass, got my fishing license and then took a nap in the hotel room while Zach went and laid pool side.

That brings us to today. We are having breakfast here at the Hampton, then we need to go bust Topo out of the clink and make one stop in to a sporting goods store (I broke the bite valve on my camelback packing it last night). We are thinking about grabbing a Subway sandwich for the trail and are planning on hitting the trail around 10 am.

A year of planning, stressing, replanning, spending, replanning and stressing some more is over.
It's time.