PCT Day 12
Mile 140.2 to 151.8 (11.6 miles)
Start: Nance Canyon tentsite
Finish: Paradise Valley Cafe and Silved Pines Inn, Idyllwild, California
We woke up late again to all the hikers camped near us having already packed up and left the nice flat soft sands of Nance Canyon. I think we just need a little extra sleep or maybe just hike fast enough that we can afford to sleep in a bit. It could be that we’re also a bit lazy in the mornings and that’s why we’re the last ones out of camp! Our bodies also seem to be getting used to the hot midday weather which is starting to feel less like walking through hell and more like just another day in the desert. Shannon and I had a two person breakfast party while shoveling down oatmeal, instant coffee and tea belting out “Delta Dawn” by Tanya Tucker. There’s a remixed version of “Delta Dawn” by Skeewiff that we blasted from my iPhone amplified by our homemade speaker of my cooking pot.
As hikers came by we waved and hollered at them celebrating the beautiful cool morning air and sunshine. Everyone was fired up and eager to make the 13+ miles to the legendary Paradise Valley Cafe for the best burgers supposedly on the whole Pacific Crest Trail! We weren’t trying to get our hopes up too much but a burger, french fries and an ice cold soda sounded freakin delicious and motivated us to get moving. The store closed at 3pm so we had to hurry up to make the mileage and catch the restaurant before it closed. Shannon and I quickly packed up, motivated by Ms. Tanya Tucker’s songs, and left the campsite at 7:30am moving at what we called “chasing cheeseburgers” pace (aka 3-4 mph which is a pretty good clip for thru hikers).
We hiked fast through the chaparral, dodging big barrel cacti with golden and coral colored flowers, prickly pear cacti with their magenta blossoms and manzanita bushes with their mahogany smooth trunks and clusters of tiny apple red berries from which they get their names in Spanish (manzanita = little apple in Español).
Thanks to one of the many Trail Angels who are legitimate saints out here helping hikers, the next reliable water source required only a 10 mile water haul instead of 30+ mile water carry. Trail Angel Mary is a poet, horseback rider and just generally an amazing person who set up a thru hiker oasis on a corner of her property complete with a 500 gallon water tank.
This morning Trail Angel Mary had left signs out on the trail to let PCT hikers know that she was training a new mustang horse she’d adopted. To avoid scaring the semi wild horse, she asked for hikers to close our umbrellas and stand down the trail away from the creature if we ran into him. We learned from Trail Angel Mary that mountain lions hide up the trail and horses are instinctively more scared of hikers positioned on the upper side, or high ground, of the trail. Mary lets hikers camp on a small section of her property providing free water, trash bins, shaded picnic tables to escape the sun, a little library and some life size cutouts of famous outdoor authors and poets like Walt Whitman, John Muir and Henry David Thoreau which are hilarious. While we were filtering water, Trail Angel Mary came back walking with her young mustang all saddled up and we were able to thank her personally for all her work and trail magic.
One of our hiking friends Haiku told us that when he was hiking by this section, a bobcat actually jumped out in front of him when he was hiking by himself! He shooed off the wild cat which seemed pretty annoyed as it walked away which is kind of cool. We didn’t see any bobcats today but we did get to see a horse which was okay by us!
We left Mary’s Hiker Oasis and headed up a gorgeous golden hillside of yellow seaside woolly sunflower, jewelled purple lupine and crimson flumes of Indian paintbrush. The trail took us wandering past huge sandy cliffs with steep drop offs where you really had to watch your footing as the strong mountain winds might sweep you off your feet. We were so eager to get to the Paradise Valley Cafe that we started laughing and running down the trail to get the miles done. We pretended that we were on the Discovery+ reality TV show called “Pig Royalty” about the competitive pig show pageants in Texas. Shannon was the pig and I was the pig wrangler and we ran the last two miles down the mountain laughing and yelling about Pig Royalty and Nugget, the hopeful 9-year-old pig showman main character from South Texas.
As we ran down the mountain squealing and yelling, we simultaneously made loads of hikers laugh/cry out in fear like Kinsey and Treebeard, Cash and others. We tore down the mountainside, chasing our way to cheeseburgers, the sun melting our brain cells but the siren song of the restaurant’s grill calling us to keep moving. We slogged the last mile on the side of the highway to the Paradise Valley Cafe, our feet throbbing, our brains melting in the hot sun and telling ourselves loudly not to stop hiking and to keep moving. At one point Shannon jokingly said that he was so exhausted he was gonna lie down in the dirt and die when we were only 200 yards away from the cafe. I felt that I was in the same boat and we had to laugh and yell at each other to make it to the restaurant hiker oasis in the desert.
The Paradise Valley Cafe caters to hikers and bikers way out yonder in the southern California hills. To impress the normal non-hiker people, Shannon and I changed behind the restaurant from our dusty hiker sneakers into our good shoes (aka our Crocs). We joined a chaotic mass of about 30-40 hikers at several tables outside the restaurant for some much anticipated grub. The waitresses were absolutely impressive and adept at handling the comings and goings of hiker madness, offering some of the best service I’ve ever had at a restaurant. Treebeard in true hiker trash fashion ate half of someone’s leftover omelette on the table as an appetizer lol. Kinsey, Princess and I joined Treebeard, Thomas, Longhaul (who had hiked the Appalachian Trail also in 2014), Colton and Squatch (his trail name came from his Vibram Five Fingers shoes leaving large Sasquatch prints in the dirt). We had an absolutely hilarious lunch of burgers, fries and iced tea.
Around the table, the guys told us that yesterday evening at Mike’s Place, a lady came by in a truck announcing she was fresh out of prison and looking to mingle. She started giving the guys lots of unwanted attention, (aka lap dances to the young guys staying at Mike’s place). We got all the juicy and slightly horrific details on that hot mess and how fast the guy skedaddled out of there. It was crazy because usually the women hikers are the ones who have to worry about getting harassed on the trail, but in this case it was the guys who unfortunately had to deal with the sketchiness.
Shannon and I made the decision to Near-o in the cute touristy hiker town of Idyllwild which meant that we hiked lower mileage and stayed overnight in town. We caught a ride into town from local Trail Angel Darryl, who Grace and Ben had met at a brewery in Julian, California. Darryl was so sweet and wouldn’t accept any money for gas for the 18 mile drive despite there being a national gas shortage. Idyllwild is nestled in the tall pines with an Alpine feel and was a nice change of pace from the wide open desert. Daryl showed us around town, giving us all the insider secrets like which was the best grocery store, when the post office opens and closes, best redo for hikers, etc.
Shannon and I were able to grab a cozy room at the Silver Pines Lodge where tons of other thru hikers were staying. Crystal was staying at the same hotel and she and I fed the giant koi fish in the backyard pond with a waterfall. We even were able to pet them, which I don’t think you’re supposed to do, but they were cute and felt a little bony and slimy. Princess and I cleaned up, showered, got our laundry washed and dried by the hotel and hit the town for snacks, adult beverages and investigated what Idyllwild was all about.
Treebeard, Thomas, Colton and Zoltan had grabbed a cabin on the Silver Pines property and hosted a dinner party for all us hiker trash later that night. 20-25 hikers showed up for dinner and drinks which was a beautiful kind of chaos. I helped cook vegan hot dogs, sausages and sauteed vegetables and assisted chef Zoltan while mingling with the hiker trash crew.
A little earlier in the night we had found our friend Eric from Hong Kong wandering the streets of Idyllwild at sunset looking exhausted, sunburned and carrying a huge unopened resupply box alongside his backpack. Most of the hotels were full and we told him that Silver Pines had room, but when we went to the office it was closed by the time we got there since it was such a small town. We asked Treebeard and the guys if they could let Eric crash with them, which they agreed to immediately. Yay hiker families – always looking out for each other!
At the party we met so many new hikers and I enjoyed canned wine while Princess and Kinsey swapped beers. People brought pizzas and Zoltan cooked massive amounts of baked mac and cheese, salad and sauerkraut and we laughed our butts off into the night. As the drinks started flowing, hiker Cash showed us her giant blister which was the size of a clementine which was absolutely nasty. Tomorrow she was getting it checked out and popped by a doctor because she wasn’t sure if it was infected. No one had ever seen a blister like that before and being the hiker trash that we are, we all took pictures of Cash’s giaganto-blister.
Later in the night, young Thomas said some wise (and slightly drunk) words along the lines “…that every minute of your life is made up of smaller lives, adding up to your whole life.” Deep words, maaaan! We all were tipsy and laughed our butts off at this late night revelation. Shannon and I left the party around 10pm which was soooo late in the hiker world. We found our way back to the hotel and didn’t fall into the koi pond, which was a great success for the evening.
