Day 13. Butterfly House

Mile 49.1cw – 65.7cw

I finally got a blister. Small and unnoticed on my heel, it hurt just enough for me to alter my steps to favor that leg. Thousands of steps with my foot slightly twisted left the arch of my foot almost unable to flex. I picked a good day to screw up my leg though, as we had only a half day before getting into town.

Since we had chosen the West Collegiate route, a hostel called “Butterfly House” was walkable from trail. Two steeply downhill miles on an old jeep road and a quarter mile off the shoulder of a highway left us facing a small cluster of colourful, butterfly-adorned buildings. The Butterfly House runs on donations, and is therefore very low-key. Check-in consisted entirely of writing our names down and throwing our stuff in one of the houses. We shared the ‘larva’ house with a young man from Denmark, who was in a bit of a hurry because his flight back home in a few weeks landed 22 hours before his first class at Uni. We traded a few trail stories as we did laundry.

The shower was janky but refreshing, and I dried off and changed into some much too large loaner clothes. My dad went into town to resupply while I slouched around the hostel. The hostel had its own food truck as well, and I ate a double patty burger. I probably could have had another. The other guy staying in the larva house left that evening, and we slept quietly with the entire place to ourselves.