Date: May 16 & 17, 2017
Miles: 478.2 – 504.5
The lovely people at Casa de Luna made pancakes and coffee this morning and I loaded up on both before heading to the field behind the house to lay all of my stuff out in the sun to dry. Pretty much everyone was doing the same, so the field soon looked like a yard sale of soggy hiker gear.
Katie, Connor and John arrived around that time, and after everything dried out, I packed up my things and we all headed to a local diner for lunch and milkshakes. When we were done, I said a temporary goodbye to them again and headed toward the highway to hitch a ride to Lake Hughes where new shoes were waiting for me at the post office. A couple picked me up and as luck would have it, the post office was their destination as well so I got a ride the whole way.
There was no sign of my shoes at the post office, so I headed down the street to the Rock Inn to get something to eat while I waited to see if they would be delivered later. John had told me that the place was a biker bar – I told him that, if the bikers were anything like Sons of Anarchy, I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t come out of Lake Hughes covered in tats and as someone’s old lady. The two bikers I saw however, looked nothing like Jax Teller, so I remained a plain old hiker.
After a while, the bartender asked if any other hikers would be coming in since a package had been delivered there. I asked if, by chance, my name was on that package and it turned out that it was my shoes. Weird. I’m glad I asked!
I went ahead and got a room there since I had planned to meet up with Katie and Connor there in the morning. It was…interesting.
But there was a live band to listen to, a place to shower and do laundry, and the comforting presence of an NA meeting right outside my door, so I figured it could have been a lot worse. Still, I slept in my quilt on top of the covers.
The next morning, Katie and Connor messaged that they were going to take the trail from Casa de Luna instead of meeting me in Lake Hughes, so I set out and walked the highway for about five miles until I reached a side trail that led up to the PCT. I saw the most wildlife I’ve seen so far on the trail on that highway between some giant dogs that looked like wolves, alpacas, goats that sounded like they were yelling ‘hey’ at me repeatedly, and a lively ostrich.
I eventually got back up to the trail and hiked until late afternoon (passing the 500 mile mark along the way!). I camped at a windy, deserted campground, ate some bland rice since I have no backcountry culinary creativity, and fell asleep to a show that I had downloaded from Netflix. It sort of almost slightly felt like home.
