Brrrr!  It was a 31 degree morning, with frost!  I stayed in my nice warm sleeping bag, but Bill got up and went for a walk.  I was just about dressed when he came back at around 6:30, carrying two cups of coffee and bringing news that Terri was making pancakes.  No kidding!  By 7:00 she was dishing up STACKS of great pancakes, using two electric griddles to keep up with all the hungry hikers!  Since it was so cold outside, hikers were squeezed into every available corner of the Anderson’s living room. 

Both Terri and Joe Anderson were having a blast, teasing people–and loving them!  It turned out that in 2005, the rumor we’d heard that Casa de Luna was a place where hikers went to get drunk and be crazy was a MYTH perpetrated by Joe Anderson himself.  and we believed it!  So in 2005, we avoided coming here, and would have this time, too, only the lure of pancakes and taco salad overcame our doubts.   Then it was more hang out and talk till around 10 am, Joe took us back to the trail.  When we got there and all piled out of his car, Joe pointed up the hill and said, “Look!  Here come more hikers!  We get to scare them–man, will this be fun!”  We’d heard about how Joe enjoys hiding out in the bushes, then leaping out roaring, just to see the freaked out reactions of innocent hungry hikers!  Well, several of the folks decided to join the fun and went to hide in the bushes with Joe, but Bill and I opted to head off on the PCT, which quickly took us up to great views of Green Valley, where Casa de Luna is located.   What a great place!  We will be walking in the “glow” of it for awhile!

It was a chilly day, great for hiking, but not so great for a poor little gopher snake that was lying across the trail, so cold it could hardly move.  The trail goes contouring through a lot of chaparral, and has several BIG dirt road crossings, where the intersections are so large that sometimes it was hard to figure out where the PCT went.   

 About 2 miles from Elizabeth Canyon Road, we met two hikers doing what’s called “The 8-Mile Challenge”…the goal is to drink one beer per mile, during the 8 miles between Elizabeth Canyon and the road to Casa de Luna.  Hmmm, that meant they’d “done” two beers already, and yes, they were quite jolly.  By lunchtime we’d reached the cache at Elizabeth Canyon Rd, where there was a red rug on the ground for the hikers to sit on. We cooked a nice dinner while the other hikers were all eating tortillas and peanut butter.   We kind of rubbed it in about how great it was to be eating DINNER, and how we never had problems with “critters” at night because we never ever cook where we camp (which is what most hikers do.  Not a good idea!)

Then came a 3 hour climb up into the Liebre Mountains–all sorts of plant communities to walk through, from manzanita & sagebrush to oak trees & miner’s lettuce to pine trees & soft duff.  Climbing hour after hour is not “fun” but I did enjoy the plant variety.  Around 4:30 we reached the Maxwell Trail Camp  “guzzler”–a water-collecting device–but the water was gross (full of mosquito larvae squiggling and wriggling), so we decided to just ration what we had.  Other hikers were there, filtering, boiling and cooking dinner. 

We mushed on, and awhile later came to a water cache!   Yahoo!  No more rationing!   And the trail was increasingly beautiful.  We felt as if we were walking through springtime, especially with the oak tres just leafing out.  We finally camped on soft oak duff on a chilly, very windy evening, and put up the tarp because rain is in the forecast for tomorrow.  What a lovely day–so much beauty along the trail, and the continuing afterglow of staying at Casa de Luna.   The Andersons are a blessing to us hikers, not just because of their food, but because they really love us. 

Walk to Lórien: Empty country near Bruinen