Mile 478 to 488

I woke up well rested in the Manzanita forest of Casa de Luna. For all the talk of it being a party place, the owner Terry set clear rules that the forest is for sleeping and in front of the house is for those looking to party.

I walked down to the house and got in line for pancakes. I grabbed some coffee and soon Fun Dip and Bedazzled showed up. Fun Dip and I even got seconds on our pancakes.

Today’s to do list involved eating lunch at the one and only restaurant in town, showering, and painting a rock for the Manzanita forest. All needed to be done before 4 pm, since we planned to hike out in the afternoon.

B&V, Bedazzled, Fun Dip, Viper, and I  headed to the cafe with a forgettable name around 1 pm and discovered that they had over 50 varieties of milkshakes. We can’t say no to milkshakes so we all picked our poison. Mine was the Irish Rose, which consisted of Irish cream, mint, and cherry ice cream. When we were at our table, Valdy forgot to ask for her milkshake to be malted, and went back in to make her request. Unfortunately, they malted my sweet Irish Rose. Thus it became a Wilted Rose.

We walked back to Casa de Luna and proceeded to paint rocks. Nothing like a little bit of art on the trail. Fun Dip, Viper, Valdy, and I took part in this classic Casa de Luna experience. You can see the results below.

My rock.

We also got PCT Class of 2017 bandannas, which Terry made us dance for. She is quite the party women and in her younger years must have been a terror. After we got ready to go, Terry got us together for a picture and right as the camera man counted 3, 2, 1 she turned around and mooned us.

The moon shot. I had the advantage of knowing it was coming.

If you go on to the Facebook page or group  (not sure which) you can see photos of all the reactions to Terry’s butt crack by the hikers that have come through.

We headed out around 4:00 and were back on the trail before we knew it. On the ride over, I commented that it seemed like we were going to a funeral since it was silent in the car.  We were all wondering what we were doing leaving Casa de Luna to go hike. It was still 83 degrees outside and we weren’t very enthused about what lied before us.

Of course, the first thing the trail did was climb steadily out of the valley. My shirt was soon sweat soaked, and I was already looking forward to the end of the day, which was supposed to come in 15 miles.

The most exciting thing we saw was a little cave that we all crawled into. There was a bottle with some notes inside, but the cave itself wasn’t too deep or large.

The only thing that lived in the cave was this ogre, which has been following us ever since. We keep it from eating us by giving it rations of Fun Dip.

When we all came out, I noticed that Bedazzled’s chest strap was pulled too tight giving her a cyclops boob. Everyone gathered around and we put our heads together to help rectify the problem. After much analysis, yanking and a little tugging, we thought thought we had fixed the problem.  However, Bedazzled announced that thw strap was more comfortable before and reverted it to its former position.

Bedazzled in the midst of assaulting the Paparazzi.

I remarked that the chest strap isn’t meant for making cleavage, but got the death stare. Let me tell you, when a German gives you the death stare, you stfu.

With the cyclops boob restored, we were on our way again.

Soon the sun had set and the ambient light was dropping when we came around a bend and saw glimmering lights in the distance.  On what we had thought was an empty desert floor, was a town. It was a pretty sight.

We took a short break to get out our headlamps. When Bedazzled, who had fallen behind, caught up, she declared, “walking 15 miles tonight is stupid.” What happened to our sweet innocent frauline? We all agreed, however, and had decided to only hike 10 miles. We hoisted our packs onto our shoulders and hiked on to an old Boy Scouts of America campsite.

After a rushed dinner, we all went off to sleep. We plan to start hiking tomorrow at 5 am since the temperature is only supposed to be in the 70s.  We aren’t quite ready to fully commit to night hiking.