Today was great. I did laundry, and my trick of packing out sheets of laundry soap worked great. I had great detergent that I didn’t have to pay for!
I went to the Dutch coffee shop, the name involved a lot of Ks. The coffee was good, but it was the pastries that really took it over the top. I got a strawberry almond blossom. It was like an open faced popover with almond extract and strawberries in the center, with large sugar crystals on the petals opening up from the middle. The crust was otherworldly. It was flaky and buttery and crispy with the center being softer and still somewhat crispy.
I also got a chocolate hazelnut braid. It was essentially the same dough braided around a Nutella filling. It was crispy and flaky on the outside with softer, pull-apart textures inside.
I couldn’t believe these pastries. They were too good. And the shop is incredibly hiker friendly. They’ll let you hang out and charge your devices as long as you need, even if they’ve closed and are still there cleaning up.
After coffee, Nonny and I went to get lunch. We ate at the Copper Kettle. It’s an odd greasy spoon diner that somehow also serves sushi.
No, I did not get sushi from a greasy spoon in a small, landlocked town in the middle of nowhere. That’s not how I’m going to get sick on this trip.
The food was okay. I’ve had better diner food. It’s always nice to get pancakes and hash browns though. We talked with a bunch of retired firefighters who came in. They had questions about the trail, including if we carried guns. We still aren’t armed.
Nonny and I headed to the store to get stuff for dinner on the way back to the hostel. At the hostel we met Mel, FarOut, and another hiker whose name I can’t remember. There were a lot of people there that night! I helped get them settled in.
After getting new new arrivals settled, I cooked dinner for Michael and Annika. I made a pasta with a fake meat (Beyond Meat) homemade tomato sauce baked with cheese. They had a crate of tomatoes that were on their last legs and needed to get used, and I was only too happy to use them. Add a side of roasted rainbow baby carrots with some heat and some of their home-harvested honey, a glass of pinot noir, and we had ourselves a dinner.
After that it was to bed.