We woke up to a cold, cloudy, and wet day, which made actually getting up and moving nearly impossible. The owner of our hotel said we could take our time packing up, so we pushed our 11am check-out time to after 1pm- we gave the poor cleaning ladies heart attacks when they walked in and we were still sitting there!
Eventually we were all packed up and ready to start our town errands before heading back to the trail. First up? The post office to send our extra food forward to Big Bear Lakes and Agua Dulce- we had WAY too much! In addition to the box of food we had sent ourselves from Julian, we had gone a little crazy at the grocery store yesterday. One of these days we hope to have our resupply figured out!! Thru hikers usually struggle first with having TOO much food, then not enough…we shall see.
The walk to the post office was a long, wet, miserable 0.6 miles- I couldn’t imagine spending the afternoon hiking in this weather! Not only would we be wet and cold as is, we would be gaining significant elevation which would make it worse! AND, setting up our tent in a cold rain?! No thank you!!
I talked it out with Matt- we had already had a terrible, cold and windy day coming out of Mt. Laguna, after which we both agreed we should have just stayed an extra day there- AND we are going to have so many cold and wet days & nights when we get to Washington, so why not pick comfort when we can?? It rarely rains in SoCal- why hike in it when we don’t have to?? Matt and I both struggled with the idea of “falling behind”- but falling behind what?? The Sierras are still a mess, what’s the rush? We decided to stay an extra night in town, and for those keeping track, that’s twice now that we had all intentions of hiking out on a Monday only to be deterred by rainy weather!!
We ended up checking into a different inn, which was another bizarre situation: Matt booked us a cabin online. Nobody answered in the office when we tried to check in, but instead somebody shut the curtains while we stood outside in the cold rain! Eventually a cleaning lady popped her head out of a cabin and told us the cabin we had rented was clean and unlocked, so we could just go in- and so we did!
We threw our stuff down and went to meet New Corey and Sunscar at the local pizza place. Corey worked some voodoo magic shit on Matt’s ankles- we are hoping it helps!!
We stopped and got dinner on the way back to our cabin- dinner was okay, but the cabin was oh so warm and welcoming when we came in from the cold!!
Happiness is: being on the same page and making the right decision- we later found out that it was just as cold and nasty out as we had imagined it would be- Charisse and 45 said they were soaking wet, setting up their tent in sleet! No thank you!!
Ali Walks Far 