Day 8: Sleeping In…

Date: Wed 4/25

PCT Start Mile: 109.5 – Warner Springs

PCT End Mile: 117.3 (on trail camping)

PCT Mileage for Day: 7.8

Off-Trail Hike Mileage: 1

Total PCT Mileage: 117.3

Total Overall Mileage: 123.65

The Highlights: sleeping in (?), showers, and short miles.

When we booked a hotel for last night, I thought of all the glorious sleep I would get and how late I would sleep in. Yeah right. Around 4am I started tossing and turning. What time was it acceptable to eat breakfast? By 5am, I was stuffing cereal bars into my face like a fat kid in a candy store while Shawn slept like normal humans do at this hour.

I laid around all morning hydrating with blue dye #1 (that’s blue Gatorade for anyone not keeping up with these blogs), catching up with the news, email, and trail info, and eventually eating more breakfast. Plantain chips are an acceptable breakfast, right? We mailed ourselves a bit too much food in our resupply box, so we were eating “extras” for breakfast. While our food choices may not have been very breakfasty, we did make hotel coffee, our first coffee since the Pine House Cafe and Tavern in Mt Laguna.

While we do enjoy coffee, we don’t lug around the stuff to make it on the trail. Many do, along with all the fixings… we’re looking at you, Creamer! A friend of ours who hiked the PCT last year was dubbed Creamerafter it was discovered that the essentials amidst his pack included a giant bag of creamer for his morning cuppa joe. 😂

We are pretty low key when it comes to trail food, eating snacks and dry foods during the day and only cooking one meal – dinner – when we get to camp. We are fine with treating ourselves to coffee when we are in town. I wouldn’t typically consider hotel room coffee a treat, but even little things get exciting when you usually live in a tent.

Laying around in our hotel room we felt lazy and listless. We should be hiking! But we needed the rest. We both took advantage of our hotel room situation by taking another shower. While yesterday’s shower had been necessary for basic hygiene, today I just felt greedy. But, by tonight I would be stinky again and our next shower wouldn’t be for five days. Eventually we packed up and – after some unsuccessful attempts to hitch – hiked the mile back to the Resource Center.

We sat around the Resource Center all afternoon, mostly talking to other hikers and eating food from our resupply box. Some of the hikers were just coming in, some leaving, and others killing time like us, waiting to hike later in the day.

We chatted with Twelve Percent again, he was prepping to hike out and make it to Paradise Cafe, about 42 miles up the trail, by lunch the next day. He was bringing only 2 bags of chips for the journey. Having hiked at least parts of all the long trails, including the majority of the PCT – several times – he’s full of stories and always good for a laugh.

We also ran into Hollywood again. We had met him in Julian, when his laundry was in the same load as ours. He was in enthused disbelief at how awesome the people he had just hitched with were, asking him and another hiker they needed anything. “They even offered us money“, he said, incredulous. “I’ve never been offered money in my life.”

Another girl we had met in Julian at Mom’s Pies was the proud owner of a brand new trail name: Kool Aid. Apparently she had put on a big red poncho and said “OH YEA!” like the creepy giant red Kool Aid pitcher with a face that we all remember from the ’80s.

Hikers digging through the hiker boxes for spare food, clothes, gear, toiletries, and miscellaneous items.

A little before 3pm, we decided to head out. We had been going to wait until 4, but we were starting to get bored. The back of my left ankle had also been sore so we figured the extra time might be good so I could ease into the hike and let it warm up.

Back on the trail, the hike began with wide open pastures with small herds of cattle scattered throughout – mostly on the trail – all giving us that blank empty unphased stare that only cows can give.

I was feeling a bit like a cow myself. We have our heaviest food carry yet in our bags – 4 days plus dinner for tonight, in addition to 6 liters of water. The pack is definitely feeling weighed down.

Crossing through the pastures, the trail eventually entered more forested terrain, following along a small creek. We stopped for a break in the shade for a bit, chatting with a couple of other hikers that had come along – Ranger and Circus Act.

Ranger was not actually his trail name, but the logo on his hat, and people found it easy to remember him by this. He had actually been icing his lip when we left the Resource Center after being stung in the mouth by a bee. Everything seemed to look fine now. Circus Act was so dubbed because he had two different colored shoes, which were two different sizes, also because of his run-ins with wildlife on the trail, including a mountain lion and a rattlesnake.

After chatting a bit, we continued on, the trail climbing up the mountain, switchback after switchback. As the evening light dimmed, the soft glow of the fading sun on the trail was a welcome change from the earlier heat.

Just shy of an 8 mile hike, we set up camp at a cleared site just off the trail and went to work cooking our dinners and filtering water. Eating makes us happy mostly because we are lightening the load in our pack. Maybe I can just eat all the rest of my food tomorrow and fast the next three days, I think while cooking dinner. Maybe not a great idea.

It was a calm night and the sky was streaked with pinks and blues as the sun set. Hiker midnight.