Days 112-113 Sat Oct 14th and 15th
2 Zero days in Bishop
The showers in the camp ground didn’t seem to be working, which was not the best start to the day, as we hadn’t showered for the last week or so.
I braved it and had a cold shower opting to wash my hair in the restroom sink where the warm tap was working.
Worryingly quite a bit of my hair was left in the sink after I had finished. Sarah later confirmed that she also found this so hopefully I am not suddenly losing all my hair.
After making a complaint at reception and receiving a pitiful $4 compensation we left heading back onto town.
Sarah managed to bag a room at a motel called Super8 and things started to look up.
We picked up an amazing chocolate croissant from a bakery. The guy serving would only serve us coffee or hot chocolate and would not make us a cappuccino or mocha.
We asked for an extra cup so we could mix them together to make a DIY mocha.
Bishop is low lying and surrounded by a mountain backdrop that looks like some form of cardboard cutout.
The town had been described as a hiker friendly town and a great place to stay. And although things actually turned out well for us in the end, there were a few situations where both of us felt we were not treated very well.
First up was last night’s hotel fiasco.
Then today we were treated rudely at the Post office. We had to pick up and bounce some packages back to Liz + further down the trail.
The lady that served me was lovely to all the other American customers, but not to me. Sarah also got similar treatment from another member of staff.
Later we went to the library as I wanted to do some blogging.
We were incredibly friendly, polite and friendly to the lady that worked in the library. It was her job to allocate time slots for computer usage.
She seemed to be on some kind of power trip on how much time we could spend on the computers, despite other computers being vacant in the library.
Every time our 30 mins slots would expire we would need to ask for an extension. Each time this happened, the librarian was incredibly snotty and passive aggressive about allocating more time. Even though other computers were vacant so other people could have just jumped onto them vs bothering us.
She seemed to treat anyone else in the library very differently and was warm and friendly.
I get it we were dirty hikers and hadn’t done laundry for over a week and I had only managed to grab a cold shower this morning. You get the picture we didn’t look or smell particularly great. But seriously!
Both Sarah and I left the library feeling that maybe rather than being so polite and submissive we should have opened both barrels on the jumped up little …..
Although we desperately needed to use the library so unfortunately we were not in the driving seat this time.
Maybe this is the kind of treatment that homeless people receive, or maybe local people in Bishop just don’t like hikers here? Or English ones at that rate? Who knows.
Anyways as I said things started to look up.
We checked into Super8 and got ourselves shipshape. I spent the rest of the day sitting on the bed blogging drinking soda and loving life.
Sarah also arranged an appointment with Blaze Physio who gave her some great advice about her foot problem.
The condition she is suffering from is called Metatarsalgia.
“Metatarsalgia (met-uh-tahr-SAL-juh) is a condition in which the ball of your foot becomes painful and inflamed. You might develop it if you participate in activities that involve running and jumping. There are other causes as well, including foot deformities and shoes that are too tight or too loose”
Hopefully with the Metatarsil pads and inserts + exercises recommend Sarah’s condition will improve. Otherwise blaze advised she gets an X-Ray.
That night we went to the Whiskey barrel and had a lovely slap up meal for my birthday. Apart from the service being rushed it was a great meal and evening.
We later returned to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening watching a Batman film drinking an alcoholic Hard Lemonade.
Sunday morning we had a leisurely morning before moving to our next place to stay called Eastside Bivvy.
This was a place that was recommended by other hikers. It was amazing.
There was a communal kitchen living space, which was modern looking and very nicely done. With large sliding glass external doors similar to sliding garage doors made it feel very open plan and funky.
The rooms were separate to this, like little apartments dotted around the property.
There were hammocks and bbq’s also dotted around the place. It was similar to a hostel, but much more fancy and a concept that would do well back in England.
We used the day to resupply and get up to date on things. We also had a delicious breakfast in a restaurant / traditional diner called Jack’s.
Hopefully tomorrow we have sorted a bus ride back to Independence and then a trail angel has agreed to take us back to the trailhead. Fingers crossed this works out and the lady doesn’t turn out to be anything like the librarian…
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