Lone Pine to Chester
We wake early to catch the 6:15 am bus to Bishop. There is no one at the hotel desk to check us out. We search everywhere, but we are going to miss our bus. I eventually leave a note telling them to charge the room to my card and send a receipt via email.
Walking in Bishop
The bus to Bishop is small and frequented by locals, including school kids, but it gets us there. One mile further and the incessant country music would have finished off several of the thru-hikers. We walk to the Best Western to speak firsthand to some hikers who made it through Forester Pass. Their stories are scary and do not sound at all fun. It reinforces our decision.
Ben picks us up and takes us to Enterprise office. Everything is great until I ask him for the address of the Susanville office where we should drop off the car. It is then Ben realizes that the Susanville office has closed. Yesterday Ben quoted me a one-way drop he now can’t deliver. We can drop the car in Reno, but the bus from there to Susanville is $22 x 5 of us. To make it worse, it does not run on the day we need to go. That means we would need a hotel in Reno.
Eventually we figure out we can drive the car all the way to Chester (near the trail), have someone drive back to Reno, drop the car, then somehow get back to Chester via buses or hitches. For all the hassle this creates, Ben knocks our rental down to a $100. We are not exactly sure what we are doing, but we are moving again, at a disorienting speed.
Our first goal is the next In And Out Burgers, which is not until Carson City. Our drive takes us through rain and hail. Once the burger mission is complete we roll to the Susanville post office, hoping to pickup Klutz and Mountain Goats supply package. No such luck.
It is raining in Chester when Klutz, Mountain Goat and I check into a Best Western. BLT and Dish Cloth drive the car back to Reno. BLT has an aunt they hope to stay with, return the car in the morning, then get back to Chester via any means possible. We will probably have one more rainy zero day awaiting their return.
Best Western in Chester