Like a kid anticipating Christmas morning, Sally and I both were looking forward to a shower and a meal in Big Bear today. We slept poorly last night as it was quite cold, so the thought of a hotel room bed beckoned. Ninja and Sierra also heard the call of the town as they were up and out before 5am.
We again slept until 5, then had Cream o Wheat for breakfast before heading down the trail about 6. It was another idyllic morning of walking, starting out in timber for the first few miles, then slowly turning to sage and small trees and finally to mostly sage with some Joshua Trees thrown in.
About two miles from camp the trail dumped onto an old dirt road. It appeared the trail continued on the other side of the road so I strode across and began to follow that trail. I noticed some PCT markers on the edge of the road I had just left, but since the trail was paralleling the road we stayed on the trail. About 100 yards later the trail began to separate from the road, moving off to the left. On my iPhone I have an app called Guthook's Trail Guides. It uses the phone's GPS to show your position relative to a map of the trail on the screen. I pulled out my phone to check my position and found I should have been on the road instead of this trail. We followed another side dirt road back until the blue dot representing us was on the red line representing the trail and headed down the road, watching our progress on the GPS. The trail soon left the road and became a single tread again. This iPhone app has saved us from wandering astray numerous times, mostly when the trail wanders onto a maze of dirt roads and the correct route becomes confusing.
We played leap frog with Meg, Roam, the dad and two sons, Huck and Luke during the morning as we moved toward the intersection of Highway 18 and the PCT. About 3 miles from the road we came upon Meg and Roam seated on some rocks with worried expressions (Meg and Roam, not the rocks). They had not seen Jeff since camp and the other hikers passing by said he was back at the place where we had gotten off trail looking for Meg, sure she was lost. They borrowed my phone to send him a text to let him know what mile post they were at. Soon, Jeff came up the trail, still quite worried, but relieved to find Meg on trail and doing fine.
At the road we quickly crossed with the intent of hitch hiking into town. Two men in their 60's had stopped to enjoy the view from the pass. We asked them for a ride to town. They expressed concern about how we could get our packs and us in the small compact car. We assured them the packs would ride fine on our laps, so we loaded in and were off.
The two men were from Denmark on holiday to visit their sister in LA, among other things. We enjoyed a lively and light hearted discussion during our 20 minute ride. They dropped us right at the hotel.
We quickly registered for our room, moved in and stripped out of our smelly clothes. A shower and we were off to the laundromat wearing only coats and shorts and shoes with no socks. All our clothing needed washing.
We returned to the hotel room and spent the rest of the afternoon reading, writing, making phone calls and planning the next legs of our journey. We had pizza delivered. Not until about 7:30 did I venture out to walk 3/4 of a mile to McDonalds for a chocolate shake, Big Mac, Fries and some cookies. Big 5 was across the street so I stopped in for shoe laces and a fuel canister for the stove, both items on our shopping list.
Tomorrow we are back on the trail. It is 90 miles to our next food resupply in Wrightwood.
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