Day 33: Escaping Hiker Heaven

Date: Sun 5/20

PCT Start Mile: 454.5

PCT End Mile: 465.6

PCT Mileage for Day: 11.1

Total PCT Mileage: 465.6

The Highlights: Agua Dulce Women’s Club Luncheon, misty hike

This morning we woke early to roosters crowing, chickens clucking, and dogs barking. The wildlife of Hiker Heaven.

Soon enough hikers were making their own noises as some prepared to hike out, leaving with the first shuttle back to town. This had been our original plan. Actually, this had been Plan B.

The original plan was to just hang out at Hiker Heaven for a couple hours yesterday and then hike out in the late afternoon/evening. This quickly changed to hiking out in the morning. But THEN, sometime just after 9pm last night, LOL had shown up!! She had hiked big mile days to get there and skipped staying at the Acton KOA (where the hot tub draws people in) and wanted to hike out with us the next day.

So, while we had originally planned to hike out first thing in the morning, LOL still needed some time to do laundry, resupply, etc, so we were now on Plan C, which was to hang out until LOL was ready to go, sometime in the afternoon. It wouldn’t kill us to take another short day and it would be fun to hike with LOL again.

Several of us took the 8:30am shuttle into town and got breakfast at a place called Homemade. We joined some hikers we had just met recently at a table – including Penguin Pants (he is so tall he has to duck when sitting in many cars, going through doorways and even garage doors), Rain Maker, Amanda, and Johnner.

After breakfast, we grabbed the next shuttle back to Hiker Heaven, where we relaxed until it was time for another meal. Seriously. Hard. Work.

Actually, the Agua Dulce Women’s Club was putting on a Meet-n-Greet Luncheon for the PCT Hikers at 11:30am. We originally hadn’t planned to be there for it, assuming we would have already hiked out. And, now we were just waiting for LOL to get herself organized to head out again, but we had forgotten about the luncheon and just finished breakfast, so didn’t plan on going. That was until they made the announcement at Hiker Heaven that all the hikers needed to leave and take a shuttle to the luncheon. Had we known this, we probably would have planned a little differently, but as it was, we were guests here and would do what we were told! If they were going to feed us, we would eat.

Soon, everyone was at the luncheon eating taco salad and desserts. It was very nice of them to put on the event, and as always we are extremely grateful for the generosity of the people in the towns along the trail.

Agua Dulce is a small town and the PCT hikers bring in a huge amount of business for them, so they are also very grateful for us.

After the luncheon, it was back to Hiker Heaven again to relax a bit more until LOL was ready to go, just in time for the 3pm shuttle.

The hike started with about 2 more miles of road walking before finally rejoining the trail, which made a long climb up into the mountainside. About 8 miles in, there were some campsites up along the ridge, but it was too windy and we decided to do about another 3 miles to camp at a lower site.

After another quick punch uphill, the remainder of the trail was downhill. We made a quick stop at a water source, a small stream of water flowing through a PVC pipe, in the next mile, and then it was only another couple miles or so downhill to the next tent site.

The mountains had become misty as the day grew later, with views that again reminded us of some of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

After just over 11 miles of hiking, we stopped for the night. Four other hikers, including LOL, are also camped in this area, which is just off a road.

Shawn had hiked ahead and set up our tent and once I was in warm clothes, I joined him to cook my dinner. We both stuck with simple Ramen packets for tonight, since it was already beginning to get dark. And because Ramen is delicious.

Overcast and misty, the sliver of yellow moon looked beautiful hanging in the sky. It’s good to be back on the trail.

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