We slept soundly in our "camp under the lake" waking only once to the howls and yaps of coyotes who were traveling through our camp in the night. After packing up camp we swung by the restroom facilities where we were able to take a splash bath in the sink, rinse some clothes and our coffee cups and brush our teeth. Feeling clean and refreshed we headed up to the store to drop off our resupply boxes. When we arrived to the store however we found a sign reading "closed for inventory" and nobody to be found. We walked across the lot to the visitors center to find it too was closed. Since these were the only two buildings in this very remote area we were at a loss for what to do. I found a phone number on the store window for a storage company and decided to call from the pay phone out front to see if they would be willing to store our boxes. When I explained my situation the woman on the other end of the line told me where she thought I might find Melissa, the girl In charge of the store, and gave me a phone number to try and reach her. I was able to call and track Melissa down working at a lodge in the neighboring town and when I got her on the phone she was extremely kind offering that we drop our boxes at her house up the road, indicating we should let ourselves into her unlocked house and leave the boxes "on the couch or wherever." She said if the store was not open when we hiked in to pick up our boxes to go ahead and come on by to her place to pick them up. The trusting kindness of strangers is always surprising and touching.
After leaving Hite with our boxes safely stashed on Melissa's coffee table we headed north to pick up more water for our next caches. On the way we stashed a few bottles of water and sodas at an intersection where we planned to hitch into town so we could have drinks while we waited for a ride, or walked if unable to hitch. After grabbing more water and lunch in town we headed out to complete several more caches down a series of dirt and gravel roads. We drove on and cached until late into the night. Around 10:30pm we were headed out another dirt road to drop our sixth cache for the day and were stopped by a wash out that was impassable. With no other option of reaching that cache location we decided to worry about that cache tomorrow and try to loop around and get into Arizona where we would be caching the following day.
Goose drove until after 2am while Shilo and I slept. When we woke we were in Arizona on more dirt roads yet again and we were close to our next cache location. I woke myself up a bit more to help with navigation and we continued out towards the trailhead where we hoped to cache and camp for the night. About six miles shy of the trailhead however we found the dirt washes impassable for my Suby so we stopped where we were and set up our bed on the side of the dirt road. We both fell fast asleep after a long, hot day.