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Slept in until 8am, and headed down from the manzanita grove in the backyard, where I was camped, to the house for pancakes and coffee. Some other hikers had arrived in the morning, including the shotgun sisters.
After breakfast, Annie, Kylie, and I talked about what we were going to do for the day. There was the option of slack packing 8 miles from up the road, back to Casa de Luna, or just heading out and getting down the trail toward homegrown, 40 miles away. The shotgun sisters and Colin planned to head out, but Annie wanted to stay for the memorial day weekend festivities, which involved Hershey syrup wrestling and other activities. I was a bit concerned that I was going to get roped into wrestling, so I definitely wanted to get out of there to make sure that didn't happen. Kylie also wanted to leave, but as Colin, 12 ounce, Gangsta Rap and I piled in the van for the trail, Kylie couldn't get ready quite quick enough so Terry was going to take her on the next trip. Unfortunately for Kylie, Terry had other plans and she ended up slack packing the 8 miles with Annie, Drop Dead, and Tumbleweed. I'm glad I was able to escape the Casa de Luna vortex.
We got to the trail at 11:30 and the first few miles hiking today were slow and miserable. It seems like every time coming off a zero day it takes me about 5 miles before I get back into hiking mode and remember why I'm out here.
The scenery today was much the same as it was the previous hiking day. The hills we are hiking through are covered in scrub brush and small trees, and as I look out across the hills I am reminded of the jungle of central America, minus the hot temperatures and horrendous humidity. It has been relatively cool all day, even overcast at times with a cool breeze.
Around 4:30pm we stopped at Maxwell Guzzler to get water, which the water report said was brown due to pine needles being in it, but otherwise good to drink. As I was filling up my first bottle I noticed that there were a number of very small little swimming creatures at the bottom of the bottle. Since we all needed water, we figured we would just double the treatment dose in hopes of killing off any potentially harmful bacteria and critters. During the water filling and treatment episode, we decided that the pine forest where we currently were would probably be the best place to camp without having to walk another 10 miles.
The little swimming guys in the water were still swimming after they should have been dead, so I boiled the water for a couple of minutes before adding my tortellini to the boiling water. Tonight for dinner I had cheese tortellini with sun dried tomatoes, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, salami, and parmesan cheese. One of the best trail meals I have concocted to this point.
After dinner it was getting colder and a bit dark so we crawled in our sleeping bags. As I turned on my phone I got two text messages and a voice mail all regarding a forest fire North of where we were. I called the Anderson's house to get an update and apparently there is/was a 100 acre fire that is now contained, and shouldn't cause a disruption to thru hikers. Nothing quite like a little excitement on the trail!
Tomorrow it's on to hikertown, but I'm not really sure what is there other than a hostel. Should be an interesting time!
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Sounds like you had mosquito larvae in your water! -BK
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