This should really be a continuation of yesterday’s post seeing as we basically haven’t had any sleep since leaving Perth. On getting to the hotel this morning, fortunately the room was ready so it was time to grab a quick shower and then head out.

The hotel is primarily a business location so it felt quite funny to stay here as stinky hikers. Fortunately not stinky yet but we will be on our way back through Concord to pick up our bags before heading to San Francisco. The room’s great although it has a really noisy air conditioner I mistook a few times for a low flying 747 buzzing the hotel.

There is a shopping centre opposite which contains a few outdoors shops as well as some places to eat. On that latter front, we went to a restaurant called Fudruckers, a name which I had to say very very slowly just in case.

In the restaurant, the lowest calorie option was around 1,320 calories so we thought, stuff it, we’re going to be hiking 300km so let’s go for it. Fatal mistake. For the next few minutes, it was all we could do to loll around helplessly in our seats clutching futilely at our stomachs after eating such a festival of fat.

After lunch, we waddled across slowly to the REI nearby to pick up our gear purchases as well as grab a few extra items. I have to say that as much as I love REI I was a little disappointed in the range at the Concord store. It won’t stop me worshipping at the altar of REI in future, however, but we will need to head to a different store to get what we need. This will most probably be Berkeley or in Sacramento on our way to Tahoe.

Having recovered from lunch from our aisle amble at REI, we headed to the local shopping centre called Sun Valley. I think that was the name of the place Marty lived in Back to the Future and this place wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1950s.

We managed to find a Verizon shop so I could get a US sim card. It was a great deal for $80 which gives unlimited data and calls within the US as well as texts to Australia. Unfortunately it didn’t work on Ben’s phone. That’s what you get for going Samsung not Apple…

After our shopping trip, it was back to the hotel via a trip to Whole Foods to grab some dinner. I was impressed with Whole Foods. They sell almost everything apart from utensils to actually eat your newly bought food with.

So we had to settle with eating our dinner with our hiking spoon. Nice and classy. After that, it was time to relax and watch some baseball before settling in for some badly needed sleep. The baseball included a pitcher with a very funny name – Bumgartner. He must have had a hard time at school…