Day 22: Madi’s Back and Maddie’s Scared

Tentsite (367.1) - Highway 2 Trailhead Parking (369.1) | Mileage: 2.0 + 3.1 (Walking around Wrightwood)

Woke up

Ughhhh I’m tired it’s early I’m warm do I have to get out of my quilt can I go back to sleep (context it’s 5:30 because we’re hitching with Sweet Pea and he wakes up early)

TOWN DAY I CAN’T WAIT TO EAT BREAKFAST AND COFFEE AND LUNCH AND SNACKS AND ICE CREAM

Packed up real quick and hit the trail for the 2 mile walk to the highway

Walked through the ski mountain again and did a photo shoot at the trail map and the blue “easiest way down” called the Crest Trail

Got to the highway. It’s DEAD no cars apparently it’s closed up ahead. Few cars in trailhead parking lot. No people. How are we gonna hitch?

Numbers spies a guy running down the PCT towards us. This guy is clearly racing trying to finish his trail run and immediately when he hits the parking lot and stops, still breathing super heavily Numbers is on him, chatting him up, experienced thru-hiker here artfully scoring us all a ride in the bed of his red pickup truck.

After the guy cools down for a few we are off!! Careening around the bends in the road, freezing air whipping our faces, chilly chilly chilly but giddy with the thought of BREAKFAST!!! Also this is so fun it’s like a ROLLERCOASTER!

Breakfast place is closed for another hour til 8:00, FarOut had the wrong opening time

Over to the coffee shop, free coffee for PCT hikers, breakfast number one

Back to the diner, get a text from Madi, she wants to meet us for breakfast but she just had noro, Maddie is freaking out she is maybe still contagious it’s only been 2 days max ohno ohno but we haven’t seen her in two weeks and can’t be rude and she’s our friend. So okay okay okay Maddie is gonna be chill and we are all eating breakfast together and now I think she’s gonna stay in our room Maddie is definitely hyperventilating but she is being so so chill. Guess we will see how it goes probably we won’t get sick but if so Maddie’s future paranoia will be absolutely off the charts. Breakfast number 2 was huge french toast and eggs and hash browns and toast and more coffee.

Now I’m sitting in the grass in the tiny veterans’ memorial park in the middle of this tiny town which is really just two streets and a main one connecting them with a hardware store, a diner, a cafe, a coffee shop, two motels, a Mexican place, a brewery, a pizza place, a few closed boutique-y looking things and that is all.

Already we’re hungry again so we all go to the other cafe in town to get more food i.e. lunch one aka a cobb salad and a black bean burger and a brownie sundae. Madi comes late after she goes to grocery store and we talk about club and college soccer and music and other things I’m forgetting. And this cafe is quite the place let me tell you. It looks like Easter at a grandma’s house i.e. all pastel colors and fake grass and bikes and flowers and those generic old fashioned diner signs and there are infant clothes hanging from the ceiling and also hanging owls connected by clear wire to the door so that when the door opens they all get pulled so it looks like they’re flying up and then the door closes and they all sink back down a bit. Which is really quite something and was very trippy to see out of the corner of your eye.

And then we sit on the grass again and try to do chores i.e. we book new flights to Chicago and car rentals based on our new timing estimates for graduation and we look at FarOut to determine how far our next carry will be and how many days we need to resupply for. And all of that takes absolutely forever because both require lots of miles calculations and thinking about alternatives and it’s hard to figure out. Madi books her own hotel and disappears to sleep which is probably good because she couldn’t remember anything and was like a zombie all day and I think that made Maddie more relaxed.

But then finally after several hours we are done and it’s 3:00 and we go to the grocery store to actually buy our groceries and it is full of thru-hikers all milling the aisles looking for the fastest cook, lightest weight, highest calorie items (plus your classic snack foods which of course no one has eaten in ages until starting the trail and eating chips, and goldfish, and chocolate, and gummies, crazy how diets change like that, we are not so extreme and mostly still don’t want that stuff but sometimes we do want chips and that is crazy unexpected and Maddie really wants more Tony’s but we cannot find plain chocolate anywhere in this town).

And then we check in and spread out all of our food, which is exploding out of our packs, onto our beds. And we get repackaging stuff into ziplocks, and putting the first four days of food into one pile, and the next size into a large priority mail box which we will be shipping to a KOA coming up because there are no good resupply options until 200 miles out i.e. Tehachapi which is the end of the SoCal section which is coming up so fast!

And then I wash our pots and spoons and cold soak Skippy or JIF or whatever sugar brand PB jar in the sink and do a load of laundry with Sweet Pea because this hotel has self serve laundry! Just one washer and one dryer but somehow no one was using it? Though it would be in higher demand.

And while we wait for the washer to run we head back to the grocery store which is down the street and across the way because this is a tiny town and pick up a few additional items at the grocery and also some electrolyte tablets (ginger lemonade and cherry limeade) at the hardware store. And then we sit at the picnic table outside our room while the dryer runs and drink a Modelo tall boy and Sin Nombre pops out of the room next door. And then we all go to dinner together including Sin Nombre at the Mexican place that has mega burritos. And everyone is there, i.e. the cool queer looking group (yay we finally found them!!!!!!!) who we semi made friends with the last few days after passing back and forth and hopefully we are still going the same speed the next couple days so we can actually be friends now that Maddie is sure they’re no longer contagious, we will see. It takes forever for a waiter to take our order and then the food to come and Sin Nombre leaves in the middle to switch his laundry and then this random Swiss man Sin Nombre befriended earlier that day shows up and orders tacos and we finish all of our food even though the men told us we wouldn’t and don’t finish theirs and then the restaurant seems to be closing so we go.

And then we run in the cold dark to the grocery to get a pint of ice cream which Maddie takes forever to pick out (we ended up with an overpriced mint cookie Ben & Jerry’s) and we eat it on the bench in the room while Sweet Pea showers but only halfway because we are full and we shower but the water is alternating freezing cold and lukewarm which is seriously depressing and somehow the smoke detector goes off and the fire department comes but there can’t be smoke because the shower is so so cold and the firemen guys definitely think we were like smoking or having a party or something but we are boring and sleepy and it is bedtime.