Day 16: Rainstorms in Twin Lakes

Miles: zero

I wake up with my stomach aching again. Menstrual camps, but also deep, roiling, sour pain in my stomach. Granite makes eggs and potatoes and toast for breakfast, but all I can eat is plain bread. I run to the bathroom multiple times, guts in revolt.

I go back to bed after breakfast and sleep on and off for a few hours. The room is so small that if I sit up and scoot toward the end of the bed, swing my legs to the ground, stand up, turn around, and sit down, I’m on the toilet. I practice this move all morning and through the early afternoon, tummy aching. I take 4 tablets of Pepto and occasionally try to sip water.

A bit after noon, Granite puts on his swimming trunks and a puffy jacket and goes to wash our laundry. I lie in bed, dozing or listening to an audiobook. The restaurant opens at 2 PM but I’m still sick and also my clothes are all in the wash, so Granite goes and brings back 2 black bean burgers with chips.

I eat a few bites of mine and stop, run to the bathroom. My stomach pain and nausea are subsiding, but I’ve got diarrhea. We talk through what we’ll do if I’m still sick tomorrow and we can’t hike out. I Google symptoms of Giardia on my phone and decide I don’t have it. Probably.

I set a decision point for 4:30 PM. If I still can’t make it more than a few feet from a bathroom by then, we’ll stay another night in Twin Lakes. At 3:55 PM, I eat a few more bites of black bean burger, sip some Gatorade, and we settle in to watch Preacher on the only channel we get on the TV. I warn Granite that he may need to go out on the porch (we don’t have a bathroom door and he’s been blessedly absent most of the day, wandering the town). We settle in to watch, blankets over us, arms touching. We get through a whole episode and I’m not sick.

The next episode starts and with it a torrential storm. It’s wonderful to be snug in a cabin while the sky opens up. Winds gust so much we have to close the windows and rescue our shoes from the covered porch.

Eventually the storm takes out the satellite TV and we wander out on the porch to witness the violent rain. But even the porch is little protection and we come back inside and curl in bed.

An hour or so later, we head through a calmer, steady rain to the restaurant. I pick at dinner, eating a piece of bread and salad and a few bites of dull pasta. We head back to our tiny cabin and I’m exhausted, even though I’ve done little all day. I decide to pack in the morning and go to sleep, my whole body heavy.