5/21/14 Wednesday. Goodbye Hiker Heaven, 5/22/14 We're Headed For a Road Walk 5/23/14 Maybe a Meal at The Rock Inn.

Last night I was tucked in my tent when Saufley's gathered along  with the bulk of hikers around the campfire.  They related the story about how they began being trail angels, there was lots of laughter.  In the morning around 7am we got a quick ride to the trail head, this is one town that celebrates the PCT, it goes right through town they named the road Pacific Crest Trail Rd.  We got dropped off where the pavement ends and began our hike up out of the valley. Overcast and cool we considered the weather a huge benefit, usually it's a killer of a hot, dry climb. We were up and over the mountain range by 11:00am hiking 10.5 miles, and down the other side to a cache of water maintained by another family of trail angels named the Andersons.  We actually napped a bit in the shade until more people came by and it got crowded.  We're hiking with what is called "The Herd"  which are faster thru hikers that are just now passing us.  They have to hike 20 mi/day, at least, if they want to make Canada before the snow falls. While it's fun to see them all, we really enjoy hiking with less of a party and more quiet.  They should all pass us in the next few weeks.

Both of us are tired, we didn't rest really well during this last town stop, we still pitched our tents instead of having a bed to sleep in and it was noisy with lots of people. But staying at Hiker Heaven is an experience we didn't want to miss, theirs is a very popular place.

Starting out after resupply, we feel the weight of our full packs, I know my feet & shoulders hurt and we have 5.5 miles to the next water cache, also supplied by the Andersons. 

Once there we saw about 10 hikers sitting under trees just off the trail. There was 5 gallon jugs of water, a cooler filled with soda, plastic chairs, bags for garbage and everyone filling their water bottles.  We found a campsite nearby under canopy of live oaks with leaf litter forming a soft mat and we set up out tents.  Soon a handful of hikers decided to camp by the water cache and all along the trail.  I thought it would be a noisy night but everyone quieted down by 9:00. 

Today, as we reached the crest of hills outside Agua Dulce we could look back at where we'd come from.

We climbed from Agua Dulce which is in front of the far mountains.

We climbed around Bouquet Reservoir and camped above it after 17.5 miles.

Camped under the oaks I was asleep before anyone else, when I awoke at 9:00pm all was quiet. 

5/22/14 Thursday. About 19 miles (7 PCT miles & about 12 road miles)

Today we know we have a reroute around the Powerhouse burn from last year. 

We were up and hiking by 6:30 in the cool, overcast morning.  This is ideal hiking weather!  Mostly gentle ups and downs until we came to the Ranger Station on San Francisquito Rd.  No one was at the Ranger Station but we used their hose to fill our bottles and started up the road. We're not sure how many miles this road walk will be. 

Officially closed.

We sang every song we knew,  walked side by side and talked, all of it helped the time go by. 

At last we broke out the umbrellas because the cloud cover disappeared and it got hot. We must have walked 8 miles.  Then we saw it, the Rock Inn, built in 1926, destroyed by fire and rebuilt with rock. 

A known biker hangout, it became a hiker hangout and we had a salad and BBQ pork sandwich with lemonade.  We rested about 1.5 hours then filled 3 liters of water each and continued walking the road.  Finally we decided to stealth camp under a big oak tree at a turn around about 5.5 miles up the road from the Inn.  We heard thunder and put up our tents quickly, we were well camouflaged so no one could see us.  A small rain shower left the tent flies wet but we were very snug. This was a long day, feet are sore from walking on asphalt and tomorrow is more road walking. 

5/23/14 Friday Memorial Day, 14-15 miles

We walked for a few hours this morning and finally reached Hwy 138 by 10:30, turned left at the intersection and fought traffic and a headwind for a mile until we could see the PCT coming down off the hills and crossing the highway.  We turned into the driveway of Hikertown.  A man has built all sorts of fun buildings on his property including a post office for hiker resupply boxes.

Those are hiker's boxes in the window.

The lounge used to be his garage but now his old collector car (a Rolls Royce) is parked outside.

and the garage has easy chairs, sofas, a small kitchen and a bathroom/ shower (for a $5 donation) for hikers. It was a very welcome place out of the fierce wind that will characterize these next days.

If we wanted to stay the night we could have slept in one of these little huts but we napped, read books, ate our dinner and went off into the desert to walk on the Los Angeles Aqueduct. 

(We actually walked the road to the edge of town and found the open waterway, turned right and followed it.)

A strong wind was blowing so we cinched down our hats and started off. We crossed a small bridge over the open water and a pipeline diverted the flow off into the desert.  We began by walking on the pipe but the wind was so strong we jumped off and followed the maintenance road straight into the desert. 

We fought the wind for about 5.5 miles and as it was getting dusk we chose a tent site among the Joshua trees using two large bushes to shield us from wind.

The Joshua trees are growing all over this part of the desert and in the gathering darkness look eerily human.  There are houses and small ranch type homes out here, it seems so  inhospitable to me.

We set an alarm for midnight so we could catch the meteor shower and we did see 2-3 streak through the sky, then zipped our tents up and drifted off to sleep to the sound of the howling wind.