Highway 2 Trailhead Parking (369.1) - Jackson Flat Campground (372.2) | Mileage: 3.1 + 1.9 (Wandering tiny Wrightwood)

Last night we were walking around in the semi dark looking for a place to camp in the wash of sand and boulders and blow downs but each time we found a flat open spot, a tent would appear and I was frustrated and exhausted and stressed and scared of both the people and the outside. We kept walking and then we were sitting at a brewery with glowing orange light and long glossy wooden picnic tables with the other hikers chatting and drinking and it was so late that the brewery closed but they allow hikers to stay so we all leaned back against our packs and slept sitting at the table deep within the nothingness of the infinite gray desert.

That’s when I woke up in the little cabin room with the light wood paneling and the crisp white sheets too hot in my fleece and Sweet Pea got up to pee and Katie rolled over and moaned something about period cramps much louder than necessary and I realized that that was my first PCT dream. I’m not sure if it’s an official rite of passage, but it took about three weeks for the trail to permeate even my town days.

It was only 6:30 and I still felt sleepy so we all stayed in bed Sweet Pea scrolling his phone, Katie trying to cuddle, and me feeling awkward and rude and thinking about my unwritten journal. Sweet Pea got up and dressed (he’s always first) so I finished packing up our food and clothes and washed my shorts in the sink while Katie read the news in bed like a retiree. We stopped at the grocery for a quart of Greek yogurt but forgot to buy more Advil (for Katie’s tummy ache) and then we sat on the deck of The Village Grind with an iced coffee and a blueberry donut and our yogurt and the three pound bag of almonds and some honey granola and caught up the journal. Sweet Pea headed out for his resupply box just before 8:30 and we hit a wall with the yogurt so we grabbed our large flat rate priority mail box full of fun goodies (it’s like Christmas!) from the room and walked back down the hill and across the big road (minuscule by Big Bear standards) to the post office. With her jovial incompetence, Katie got the grumpy woman behind the counter to laugh and offer that the delivery address (a campground near Acton due to a dearth of accessible grocery stores in the next section) is only an hour away by car even though it will take us at least four days to get there. Fun fun.

We took our recycling to a little mobile facility behind the hardware store and the guy was our age and super friendly but they only take drink containers and we only had two beer cans and a glass bottle from instant coffee and they don’t take paper which was really sad because I mostly had cardboard boxes from bars and oats and things. The guy offered to pay a few cents (I think maybe you get 40 cents per pound of aluminum) but I said that was okay I really just wanted it to be recycled and he asked about the trail and had a cool nose piercing and seemed interested in hiking and I felt so so lucky to have the time and the money to be out here rather than sitting alone outside a parking lot recycling container all day.

We went back to the coffee shop and sat with Flo? (unclear if this is a real name or a trail name) with the yellow shirt and the septum piercing and all of her friends who we’d been seeing a lot and running away from the past few days (on account of the norovirus) and it turned out that she was actually super cool and not scary at all and from Richmond and had several art degrees from VCU and now lives in Oakland. She offered us strawberries and donuts but we had to decline (on account of the norovirus) but it was really cool and I’m optimistic again that we will make more friends and not just be lonely forest hermits!

We finished packing up for checkout at 11 and Sweet Pea figured out that there was a stereo in the room so we enjoyed a lovely fifteen minutes of Interpol and then we sat at a picnic table outside in the cute garden and listened to the kids at recess across the street and a guy asked us to bum a shower which he did impressively fast and we went back to the Mexican place and sat at the exact same table but I ordered veggie enchiladas this time and then we were back at the picnic table and we drank the rest of the mint cookie Ben & Jerry’s and Madi resuscitated from the dead and it was finally hot in the sun so we cut through the red cabins to the library. It was really small and the tables didn’t have outlets so I sat in a comfy chair by the magazines and pulled photos and the librarian was so sweet and asked us to sign the hiker log. I LOVE the libraries and really wish I had time to read but I’m always catching up on this instead which is vaguely intellectual but I assume the librarians think I’m just scrolling TikTok oh well.

Katie had an inside headache so we sat in the grass in the little memorial park and the woman and her tiny black dog walked by again and recognized us and we ate the rest of the now warm and runny yogurt and posted through day 16 (woohoo only a week behind!) and trimmed our filthy nails so they hopefully get less filthy. We stopped at the grocery (for the record, it is across the big street and not at all on the way) and there were so many hikers at the picnic tables outside and we bought green apples for a snack and beer to pack out (I don’t know why this is so fun except the cans are pretty and also calories??) and we went to the coffee shop for another iced coffee and a charge and I washed the apples with soap in the sink in the bathroom (I am anal about washing produce now because of the norovirus) but I dropped one of them on the floor of the bathroom (which was very gross but hopefully doesn’t have any norovirus because Katie ate it with peanut butter). Just before 5, we walked back to the hardware store (next to the grocery) because Sweet Pea had posted on FB and found us a ride back to the trail with a nice man called Brian (ex-military?) in a huge Ford truck called a which apparently is quite nice (the sports car of the pickup trucks) and it could accelerate very fast and had a fancy custom suspension that made me feel a bit floaty and drunk unless that was all the coffee. At the trailhead, he gave us several custom patches (trail angels seem to really like making their own one-of-a-kind merch) and Madi tipped him which was very nice because our cash was at the very bottom of my now very tall pack. And then we hiked about two miles in and it was the beautiful time of day and we talked about what was next on the trail and Katie told them about her permit fiasco and I fell behind taking pictures that probably won’t turn out but it was SO SO PRETTY and you could see the little brown rock formations popping up out of the flat flat desert floor and the low puffy clouds that seem to roll in like waves and it was raining to the right (I don’t know what direction that was) and the sun broke through the higher heavy white clouds and illuminated the mountains like a theater light.

The campground was large and the four of us had a whole group site to ourselves and we pitched our tents and it started to sprinkle but never rained so we sat in a little circle and Katie made rice and pinto beans and pepper jack cheese and avocado and tortillas and chips but the gas ran out pretty immediately so we ate it cold and the rice was a little crunchy. Sweet Pea said we could borrow his gas but I said we would save it for the night we make mac and cheese which I am so excited for and we drank the double hazy IPA and I ate a chocolate chip protein cookie and it got dark and they are waking up at 4! am for Mount Baden Powell so we brushed our teeth and put our food in the bear box but we have so much it didn’t all fit in the bear bag and we inflated our pads and did some journaling and Katie fell asleep and now I maybe have to pee a bit but it’s too much effort to get out of the tent so I’ll just wait until tomorrow.