Day 99: ⛺@ mile 1'323.8 - Chester

Date: 15.07.2018 Miles hiked today: 7.7 Miles Total Mileage: Mile 1'331.3

It rained early this morning heavily for about 1 hour. Totally unexpected but really nice. Ruth only camped with her mash tent and had to get up to put on the rain cover in the middle of the night, poor one. As my tent has no mesh I never have to worry about rain. The air is so fresh and wonderful right now! And my tent is already dry again!

It's a little less than 8 miles of downhill hiking to Chester. We will be there at the right time for Breakfast. While hiking down Flash is standing and telling us to be quite. What's going on? Ah there is cam hear it, sounds like two bears or deers are fighting. It's a roaring sound. I'm so excited I want to see them, whatever it is! Let's go and check it out! A minute later we pass a hiker hiking up the trail, and we ask him if he knows where the noise is coming from. Yes, he says, it's a chainsaw, they are cutting some trees! What?! No that's impossible! But yes it's true, now we can hear the noise better and it really is a chainsaw. How disappointing, two bears fighting would have been much cooler!

We keep hiking on until we reach the main street from where we can hitch into Chester. Yeah, here we come. We go for breakfast first thing and sort out our situation. There is free camping behind the church but we where told that it is incredibly hot. Otherwise we can share a hotel, 4 of us that normally works fine and is a good deal if we split up the costs. However, the cheaper hotel which is 100 USD, only allows 2 person in a room with 2 queen size beds. How that? If there are two queen size beds you can easily fit 4 people in?! Well he is the owner and he makes the rules. 50 USD per night and person is too much. But we are told that the best Western is very hiker friendly and check it out. They give us a good deal and we are happy to take it. However, the room will only be ready in about 2 hours. Well, no shower yet but we can wash our clothes at the laundry. That takes a lot of time too. It's still early too so that's fine. After washing and drying our clothes the room is ready too. The shower feels like heaven on earth! Such a good treat! The afternoon passes I no time, where has it gone? Well we are all hungry again, time for dinner! I can't see burger and pizza anymore but Chinese sounds wonderful. 11 USD for a massive dinner with a soup, two starters, two main and a desert, heck yeah I'm in! Feeling too full again we walk back. And see there, new hikers have arrived late in the afternoon. Dirty Money is here too! What a nice pleasure! With a couple of other hikers I'm enjoying the cooler (it's still very warm) evening, sitting, drinking (celebrating out halfway!) and chatting outside until it's time for bed, long time after hikers midnight!