It was cold, gray and windy this morning, and we were hiking along IN the clouds, which swirled all around us.  I call this “cloud ballet” because of the dramatic, graceful way those graywhite swirls dance and leap and turn.  And then hooray!   We reached the 500 mile post!  That was worth a cheer!   No sunpatch for breakfast–all we could do was hunker down, gobble granola and go.   The guidebook had ecstatic descriptions of the views (“You can see Magic Mountain!  Hollywood!…) Oh well, at least we had “cloud ballet” to watch.

But finally we came to The Big Right Turn and headed down, north, into sun at last and Antelope Valley views.  Where the trail turns east, we were VERY glad to find that instead of the rough, deeply gullied mess we had to deal with in 2005, things were much improved (though there were a lot of “blowdowns” to contend with).

We reached our first “poppy patch” and I was very excited–sure enough, when we finally got down INTO Antelope Valley, there were poppies everywhere, plus lots of green, irrigated fields.    The PCT, of course, takes its own sweet time about getting there, by travelling way off to the east.   By 2:30, we had reached Hikertown, an experience in itself, where hikers can choose from a crazy array of accommodations.  Bob the caretaker met us at the gate and gave us a tour.  Hikertown is made up of a random collection of old Hollywood “western town” false fronts, only here, there really are ROOMS behind the “fronts.”   The “post office” really IS the Hikertown PO, where all the hiker boxes come in (ours was there, hooray!).  The “feed store” is actually the computer room and a sort of museum as well.  The Hikertown garage has been turned into a hiker lounge, with lots of comfortable couches, a TV, a kitchen and a large dining table.

We ended up chosing to stay in a “room” that was half a shipping container with a clock tower on top and a 1950’s Rolls Royce parked outside.  Bob gave us a ride down to the store, where we got ice cream and other treats.  When we got back, I did our laundry, but had to dry it by hanging it on a fence, since the dryer wasn’t working.  It was so windy that things dried very fast, but I kept checking for fear that something might blow away off into the valley!   Bill worked on doctoring his toes–he has some blisters.  Bummer.  My feet are fine.  Other hikers were there, hanging out and waiting for the UPS truck to arrive, because one guy, “Maximum Chill” had ordered a new pack and was anxious to receive it and head out on the trail again.  There was much rejoicing when the truck got there, and the pack DID come!

Eventually I went to the kitchen and made us some dinner, which included a fresh fruit salad (very wonderful after days of trail food) and some other hikers found a cake mix.  They decided that passing the 500 mile mark was worth a celebration, so Bob the caretaker rounded up some eggs and we ended up with a great chocolate cake plus ice cream to go with it.  We feasted and laughed and talked till all of a sudden someone looked at their watch and gasped, “Yikes!  It’s almost Hiker Midnight (9 pm)!!” and we all scurried to bed. 

I had written in the Hikertown trail register, “The PCT goes WAY west, then WAY east.  Why not make a new trail straight from Casa de Luna to Hikertown?”    This is a fun place to be, and it really was great to be able to celebrate 500 MILES DONE!

Walk to Lórien: Streambed near Bruinen

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

Boy, are we glad we camped DOWN in a gully–all the hilltops were in cloud this morning!  And sure enough, 5 minutes of walking had us at “The Oasis”, complete with all its usual accoutrements of skeletons, pink flamingo, “Class of 2010” banner, and coolers with cold sodas.  Too cold for a soda today!  Brrrr!   One guy was actually camped IN the cache, and several others nearby. 

There was no sun to provide a warm place for breakfast, so we walked fast till we were well warmed up, then stopped to gobble down granola before hurrying on, enjoying the wildflowers by the trail and the valley views as we hiked along.  When we reached the road, we ALMOST decided to just hike on, but the Andersons (who provide “The Oasis”) had put up a sign about “Come on down to our place 24/7–all the pancakes and taco salad you can eat.”  That did it.  “Hmmm, we need to let the Sierras melt some more!” we said.

And so we ended up in a fantastic time warp zone called Casa de Luna.  The Andersons (Terri & Joe) call it “Hippy Daycare”.  We felt like we were back in the 1960’s in a “hippie house” (we really did live in a Christian “hippie house” for awhile) and we found a perfect campsite in the “Magical Manzanita Forest” out back.  We spent the whole rest of the day lounging around wherever we could find a sunpatch, eating, and talking to other hikers.  Lunch was provided by “Visa”, whose wife died while on a PCT training hike last year.  Now Visa does everything he can to help hikers, and he BBQ’ed us all a great meal.  Meanwhile, there is a bedsheet hanging on the garage door, which all the hikers “sign” with drawings, etc.  I drew a picture of us two “Petaluma Chickens” hiking the PCT.  (Our hometown of Petaluma, CA, was once called “The Egg Capital of the World”).

News from the Sierras is still not good. MORE snow is falling up there, and it is cold even here at Casa de Luna.  After lunch, Bill and I were sitting together trying to get warm, when Terri Anderson came along and put a blanket over us!  She likes to mother all the hikers!  All of us agreed that snow or no snow, we are determined to push on through the Sierras. 

Tonight, sure enough, we had the famous taco salad for dinner, followed by hilarious “trail tales” from Joe & Terri, especially the one about how they started hosting hikers.  It all began with the Joy of Cooking recipe for vegetable soup……and I won’t tell you any of the rest of it, because you HAVE to come to Casa de Luna and hear Joe and Terri’s version.  We all laughed till our sides hurt!   I have not laughed so much in a long time!

We had not planned to even stop here at Casa de Luna, and now, we are SO GLAD we did!  There is no time limit on how long you can stay, and it is much more relaxing than Hiker Heaven.  And we were glad to hear Joe Anderson reminding the hikers that there really is a “Higher Power” and things don’t just happen by accident/luck.  No kidding, Joe!  We finally wandered off to our spot in the Magical Manzanita Forest and went to bed.  What a fun day!

Walk to Lórien: West of River Bruinen

Last night, with Bill’s help (part of the system for lighting it was broken and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work) I fired up the BBQ at the Saufleys and made us a great dinner of steak, potatoes and tomatoes.   In 2005, there was a big BBQ every night, with all the hikers participating…I guess times change.   We went to bed early, and it RAINED during the night here, but dusted the local mountains with SNOW.  Oh boy.  No melting in the Sierras under these conditions!  It was a very cold morning, but we looked forward to church, then back on the PCT.   

We went into the big trailer to have breakfast, and managed to finish up every bit of the food we’d bought at Walmart, except for some cream cheese.  I offered it to two young guys who were making pancakes, and they happily accepted!  Donna Saufley herself came by for awhile to hang out with us.  She was all bundled up because of the cold, as were we all!  Buddy the dog was also spending the early morning with us hikers.  He goes from one lap to another, wanting lots of petting! 

When JJ found out we were going to church, he wanted to come, too, and offered us a ride.  Bill-the-music-teacher came, too, and so at 8:30, we all headed to Shepherd of the Hills church in Agua Dulce, the church that’s right on the PCT trail route.  It turned out to be a “satellite” church of a very large “mother” church in LA.  And (why am I not surprised?) the message was pretty much what Bill had shared with JJ a couple of days ago.   I guess God wanted JJ to be SURE.

After church, JJ and Bill-the-music-teacher headed back to tackle hiker laundry, while Bill and I stayed on for the adult Sunday School class, which turned out to be great–a fine discussion of 1 Corinthians 12 by a bunch of folks who really know the Bible and aren’t just talking opinions.  We of course joined right in, and by the end the class said, “Are you sure you guys can’t stay another week?”  But we said, “No, sorry–the trail is calling”, and we headed for the PCT. 

The trail route is a little bit confusing for a short while after it leaves the road, but eventually we figured it out and began to climb up lovely Sierra Pelona Ridge.   We climbed in and out of a couple of canyons, with the wind blowing strong and cold–great hiking weather!  The grass on the hills was green, the wildflowers were great, the trees leafing out.  A look at the higher mountains showed that last night’s snow dusting had disappeared, and eventually we were getting views of Bouquet Canyon Reservoir.  We were SO glad to be back on the trail!

At the end of the day,  we were down into Spunky Canyon, which was also very pretty–lots of oak trees, bushes, grass and a trickling creek–but no flat spots!  Finally we came across a side gully, out of the wind, where there was a campable spot.  The temperature was 48 degrees–brrrr!  I had a suspicion that we were pretty close to the Casa de Luna cache, but the sun was down and there had been so few spots to camp that we didn’t dare continue on to find out.  So we stopped for the night and set up the tarp in case it rained.

Walk to Lórien: Near River Bruinen

We were up at 6 am today, and ate  the last of our leftover trail breakfasts while enjoying the jolly company of other hikers and some of the Hiker Heaven volunteers.  One of those volunteers is a retired school band director–  which reminds me, I haven’t mentioned that one of the fun features of Hiker Heaven is the musicians. There’s a piano, a “hiker guitar” (which gets LOTS of use!) and now a trombone, because yes indeed, the band director serenaded us on his trombone that he brought along.  Since I played trombone myself in high school and college, that was totally cool!

It’s much cooler today— yesterday we were all looking for shade, but today we looked for sun.  We had fun hanging out with Transient and JJ.  Transient was telling stories of his adventures in Europe while in the army, and JJ told us about his “wild” youth.  He said that later on when he got older, a lot of things in his life went all wrong, and he ended up for awhile as a 400 lb. alcoholic who had just about given up on life.  But finally he came to his senses and said, “What have I done?”  The first thing he did was try to exercise.  “I could only walk a half block at first,”  JJ laughed.  “One time I really outdid myself and walked THREE blocks–then I had to call a cab to take me home!”  But he persevered, and the weight began to come off.  Now he’s an avid hiker of reasonable weight, and has even climbed Mt. Whitney!    Way to go, JJ!

The other thru-hikers are all talking “Sierras”. Many bought “serious snow equipment” at REI yesterday–ice axes, crampons, goggles, etc.–and are determined to “go for it”, despite the fact that yesterday they  plowed four feet of NEW snow off the road over Tioga Pass.  Georgi Heitman in Old Station sent word to Hiker Heaven, “Don’t even THINK about coming up here right now.  There’s way too much snow!”   Bill and I do plan to go straight through, but we will take our time about getting to Kennedy Meadows so that hopefully the snow will have melted down more. 

 Some folks are planning to do “moonlight hiking” tonight, since it’s easy trail and a close-to-full moon. Bill and I are resting (me, writing!) and tomorrow morning we will head out for a 9:00 am church service (it’s about an hour’s walk from here and right along the PCT route). After church, we’ll just keep going!

Walk to Rivendell: In Rivendell!