Day 13: (04/17) : to 157.4 :: 13.4 miles

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We are in yet another dry section of trail. We camped a few miles from a water cache and had just a short distance to cover before reaching it in the morning. We caught up with the other hiker there and got to talk to him a little and found him to he an interesting guy. Just a few days ago we’d been talking about the Appalachian Trail and wondering if people ever do it southbound because that sounded neat, and this has!! Neat! Maybe that will be our next summer. He goes by the trail name Wilson Wilson and we talked to him far too long, extending our breakfast break to over an hour. 

The water cache was amazing, maintained by a Trail Angel named Mary. People who help PCT hikers are called Trail Angels. She has a 500 gallon water tank which she fills by hand with 1 gallon jugs that she fills somewhere offsite. She also had a free little library filled with photo copies of short books bound in twine for hikers to take for reading material, a picnic bench, an outhouse and a solar shower. Wow!

From there we hiked 8 miles to highway 79. A popular detour from highway 79 is to go 1.5 miles to Paradise Valley Cafe. The cafe is located at the corner of two county highways and is a popular with car travelers, hikers, motorcycle and car clubs, and even horse riders. Due to covid we weren’t sure if we should bother, but the hope of fresh food lured us of the trail. The “trail” there is just a worn use path under the power lines and parallel to the road. Jeff got a veggie burger and fries and I had a huge salad. We got to eat it on the picnic benches out front and it was good, but all the take out packaging waste makes us feel bad.

Tiredness set in after lunch, but we made it a few more miles up out of the valley and into the mountains and we were rewarded with a bob cat sighting! Clouds were beginning to gather and the views of the mountains became obscured. 


Enjoying more lounge chair in the morning.

Nice boulders and views of the San Diego County mountains from our campsite 

Beautiful views and clouds form our campsite 

View down the road from the cache. Does the lady live in the big house??

Water cache at mile 145 of the trail.

Trail Angel Mary’s hiker oasis 

View of Anza Valley 

A horned lizard hiding amongst the grasses 

View of the mountains on the walk to Paradise Valley Café 

Gigantic salad at Paradise Valley Café 

Paradise Valley Café 

The powerline trail to the Café 

Up into the mountains 

Comments

  1. JGJune 5, 2020 at 7:09 AM

    I’ll have you know those styrofoam clamshell food containers are probably made right here in Cedar City. We have three plants making them 24 hours a day. I don’t know why they picked here.

    ReplyDelete

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