Library + Computer = Victory
I have a real keyboard!!!!
This is so great, I can't even begin to describe.
WHOOP!
Also, this means you are spared the video blog (at least for now Dun Dun Duuuuuun).
From the beginning, which is, in this case, right before the town of Idyllwild:
So the morning after leaving Warner Springs Nick and I ran across a baby rodent (we later determined this rodent to be a baby kangaroo rat) laying directly in the middle of the trail. We decided to place it on the side of the trail so it wouldn't get stepped on by any unobservant hikers while we filtered the water for our day's journey. After filtering all my water at the stream a few dozen meters down the trail, I went back to check on the little guy (you know, to see if mom had come back and gotten him or if he had been eaten by a snake). Well, instead I found him screaming because he was being eaten alive by ants. So obviously I rescued him.....and then adopted him. We fed him oatmeal mush because we didn't have anything else we thought he could digest and thus he was given the name Oatmeal.
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| Oatmeal |
As we approached our next town stop,Anza, we found out that a good portion of the trail had been closed off due to the recent fires. So we went off the trail about a mile to a place called Paradise Cafe and planned to hitch a ride into town from there. And then all kinds of things happened, I'll just list them:
-The owner of the cafe loves hikers so we got to spend the night on the cafe porch (totally awesome)
-Oatmeal died, and we buried him behind the Cafe (really sad)
-We found out Anza is not-so-hiker-friendly and decided to hitch into it's neighboring Town Idyllwild instead even though our packages were at the Anze post office
However, it was worth it. In Idyllwild we shared a giant cabin complete with fireplace and complementary wood for a really great price with just one other hiker, Whisky Girl (who is pretty awesome). Since we had our packages bounced to Idyllwild we ended up having to wait a couple extra days but it was worth it. The the next two nights we stayed at the $3 campsite with a ton of other hikers and each night was filled with a campfire, drinks and the sound of laughter. We met a ton of new people. It was awesome.
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| My First Care Package! Thanks Y'all! |
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| America, Smores, and Snake Eyes |
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| Campfire |
The next story-worthy stop was at Ziggy and the Bear's house. They are an elderly couple who invite hikers into their home every year and have a huge (and very good) reputation amongst hikers. We got a foot-bath, shower, laundry station, burger-king delivery, huge bowl of icecream + a cookie, and a place to stay. The only downside was that at night a ton of camel spiders came out and oh my golly those things are fast and scary as all get-up. Needless to say I ended up setting up my tent in their front yard and sharing it with my friend Smores. Snake Eyes was perfectly content to sleep amongst them (but I mean who is surprised by that? haha)
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| Snake Eyes, Me, Whisky Girl |
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| Our Campsite View |
After Ziggy and the Bear's we set out into some of the hottest desert yet. We passed a wind farm (which is really cool up close) and took a break at a Ranger Station located quite literally in the middle of an oasis (just like in the movies!) They had a trout pond and tons of shade. Whisky and a lot of the hikers decided to camp there but my friends Smores and Sadie decided to go ahead of us and do some night hiking so Snake Eyes and I decided to follow them about an hour after they left. And it's a good thing we did. We found Smores basically passed out on the side of the trail barely cognitive about four miles in. We camped next to her and in the morning I walked her back to the Ranger Station. It was pretty scary when we found her, but the morning went smoothly and she's doing much better now!
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| Our First Rattlesnake! |
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| The Trout Pond |
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| Whisky Girl, Snake Eyes, Clever, America & The Graduate |
So to kind of sum up what happened next, pretty much all of our friends ended up skipping the next portion of the trail and hitched from the Ranger Station to the hostel in Big Bear. We made it to the Animal Cages (Movie-star animals literally in small cages...it was actually really depressing) about 40 miles from there and then I ran out of food, so we ended up hitching from there into town. The town and hostel were splendid. We got to eat really fantastic Indian-style food (who would have thought?!) and Nick got to go see Godzilla at the theater. I had to leave my leather boots in the hiker box there, which was sad because I was really attached to them, but at least another hiker might be able to use them. [Note: Hiker Boxes are basically this giant free-for-all where hikers can dump extra gear/food/supplies they don't want or need that other hikers can then rummage through and take] Smores, Whisky Girl, Pounce and I even convinced the owner (Sarge) to grant us our own girls room away from the stinking guys. So basically this place ruled. Sadly though my friend Whisky had to leave the trail and we ended up having to say a lot of goodbyes.
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| Smores and Whisy Girl in the Girls Room |
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| Me sad because I'm saying goodbye to my boots |
Next we went through some of the prettiest sections of the trail I've seen yet (and some of the scariest).
One night we woke up with frost on our tent. The next night we slept under a bridge next to some awesome water, but were awoken several times in the night to some other campers (not hikers) who were screaming (as in someone might have been getting murdered) and cursing. It took me about 30 minutes to decide they were just drunk teenagers and no one was actually getting killed. We then made it to the hot springs, which we did not get in because there was quite literally un-buried feces and toilet paper all around it. It was disgusting. Then we got rained on, which actually wasn't so terrible and kept it from being too hot. That night was the best though. I call it the Horror Story, and here's how it goes:
The sun began to set and so we started looking for a campsite. As we walked out a 'No Camping Zone', the first thing we saw was a lovely flat patch of sandy ground...but there were quick-sand warnings. Then we came upon anothjer flat sandy bank....which ended up being a road. Then, not 3 mintues later, we found a spot that was practically built for our tent. It was the perfect recatngular size with no weeds or large stones or anything....but upon closer inspection in the failing light we saw it was swarming with ants. Then came the RV's in the middle of nowhere, followed by several giant dumpsters, followed by 3 graves (no kidding...okay so they ended up being doggy graves which made us feel better but still!), then we saw a bat, and all the while the landscape is starting to look more and more like it does in Breaking Bad. But finally we found a campsite and the night went well. But seriously y'all, horror story.
