4.14.2018 Day 21

It was a lazy Saturday start. I was first to wake up, Laura shortly behind. Without waking Justin we tried to the room in search of a good cup of coffee but the sleeping giant awoke. He decided to come with for a cold walk for some tea. Unfortunately, these small towns businesses have random hours so to our dismay the coffee shop was going to open until 9. It was 8:03. So we walked to a breakfast joint, it wasn’t great. We should have splurged and went to Dennys. Oh well, good in our stomachs and back to the hotel we went to finish packing our bags.

I worked really hard to part with a few things I haven’t been using. Like my camp towel, a few toiletry items, and 2 extra water bladders. I did however stash said items in a postal box and send them forward on the trail in what is called a “bounce box.” We stashed our town stuff that we don’t use on the trail (like a huge bottle of body wash and extra large tube of sunblock) and some extra food items we didn’t need to carry for 6 days all in the box. The box will be waiting for us in Wrightwood which will be our next town stop sometime around next Thursday or Friday. Wrightwood is currently 90 miles from where we are camped this evening.

So we pack, we check out of the lodge and walk to the post office–which conveniently enough is only open for 2 hours on Saturdays 10am-noon. While I’m mailing the box, Justin calls up John from yesterday and arranged our ride back to the trail. 10 minutes later, John shows up at the post office with 2 hikers he picked up along the way (from his house) who were headed into town for food before they went back to the trail. It was Jumanji and Enigma. Jumanji I met back at Mary’s Place drinking lemonade over a hundred miles ago. Crazy!

So John drops us off back to the trail at mile 266. Our plan from there was 13 miles to a camp site at mile 279. It was a pretty easy day. Although our packs were heavy being the first day out of town, the terrain was fairly forgiving. We were back on the trail by noon today and had camp set up by 630pm. We only took 2 bread today so our pace was pretty decent.

We’re at an elevation of 7,674ft so it’s going to be another cold night up here. Electronics and water filter are stash inside and tonight I brought my water bottles inside the tent with me. Let’s hope they don’t freeze. I carried 3 full liters here today, so the pack was extra heavy. Tomorrow will be 6 miles down trail before we hit water again. We did run into a group of college kids out on a day hike. Most of them knew nothing about the PCT — yes, even though they were hiking on it. But they were full of questions for us. We all laughed when one of them said, “when I grow up I want to be just like you guys!” We kinda chuckled and agreed we still hadn’t grown up yet ourselves.

Just a few shots from the day. This was a burn closure of the trail. We had to detour on a 4×4 road that wasn’t a ton of fun. I’m kinda on a hot chocolate kick at night. Altho we all bailed into our tents before I could finish this evening.

And if you’re wondering how much food we have this is what that looks like. My Zpacks food bag (the green bag) is usually my day snacks. The clear back is 12×20 stuffed with everything else. Maybe a bit much, but I always like my options. The other bag is Justin’s food. Yeah, I should have grabbed a 4 pack of Hawaiian rolls myself. I was super jealous of that tonight. Altho he did share some of his Whoppers with me.

I’m sure that’s enough babble for today. Hoping to stay warm tonight. Might need to add my liner bag of these high elevation nights get any colder… although the desert is near again…. one extreme to the other out here. Goodnight.