PCT Day 10
Mile 109.3 to 119.6
Start: Endangered toad campsite near Warner Springs, CA
Finish: Lost Valley springs tentsite
You could feel the excitement at camp building this morning as hikers waited in anticipation for the Post Office to open. Oh boy – you can tell how exciting things get out here on the Pacific Crest Trail when it’s Post Office day!! You had to walk 1.2 miles to the Post Office to pick up your resupply box but it was totally worth it as the gas station next door had hot dogs. You may be asking yourself “What is the big deal? It’s just a gas station hot dog! Everyone knows that you’re probably going to get food poisoning and maybe an infectious disease from gas station hotdogs.”
Well, honey, let me tell you – these aren’t just any gas station hot dogs. These are gourmet freakin hot dogs! Delicious, spicy juicy sausages, served with mustard and relish and lovingly wrapped in tin foil, they’d be worthy of any food critic out there. Well, maybe not quite that spectacular because all of these opinions are coming from Pacific Crest Trail hikers who literally eat food off the ground. Anyways, these hot dogs are so fancy that they took 20 minutes to cook!
We were dreaming about gas station hot dogs when we realized that our entire campsite had already cleared out at 7:30am in anticipation of the 8am opening of the Warner Springs Post Office and the legendary hot dogs. Like usual, Princess and I took our time and left camp at 8:30 to avoid the big rush at the Post Office. We took off across some backfields of dried hay and cacti, winding 1.2 miles off trail behind the Cal Fire station and onto the main road until we finally got to the Post Office and convenience store. For days now we had been talking about how many hot dogs we were going to eat and I was trying to go for a Joey Chestnut competitive eating record of three hot dogs, lol. Pretty sure that man could eat 70 hotdogs in 10 minutes or something crazy like that.
Unfortunately, I could barely finish one without the bun (gluten-free babyyyy) because they were enormous and super spicy. The gas station lady was one of my favorite trail characters who we met so far and we placed hot dog orders with her. Since all the hikers before us had cleared her out that batch of hot dogs it was going to take a little bit of time for the next batch to cook. Gas station lady suggested that we should probably start drinking while we waited and informed us that Modelo beer and gas station hot dogs are the breakfast of champions. It was only 9am and we laughed our butts off with this lady. I really wish I could drink with the gas station lady someday as she seemed super fun – what a hoot!
At the Warner Springs Post Office, we grabbed our three boxes, “bounced” the one with our laptop forward, because there’s nowhere to put the laptop in our backpack. “Bouncing” a box means that you send your package forward to a Post Office further up the trail which you can do 3 times without being charged! We incorrectly assumed that there would be a place to stay in Warner Springs so we sent our laptop there but the town was so small that I’m pretty sure it didn’t even have a stop sign, let alone a hotel or grocery store. Eric from Hong Kong looked at us in horror when we came over with our 3 giant resupply boxes and I’m pretty sure we fulfilled some sort of stereotype about Americans eating so much food and obesity lol. He kept asking if we were mistakenly given an extra box for food as he only had a tiny resupply package. Nope, we just went a little overboard with snacks!
While eating ice cream, drinking energy drinks and chowing down on incredibly delicious gourmet freakin hot dogs, we unpacked and sorted through our resupply boxes. The Post Office man was super nice and helped us out immensely. Off to the side of the gas station in the shade and near the designated PCT hiker dumpsters (yes, the PCT hiker class of 2021 had its own dumpster labeled specifically for us), probably 20 of us hikers spread out sorting through our mail drops.
Like Eric in the Post Office had commented, Princess and I quickly realized we had way too much food that we sent to ourselves. Luckily for us, Trail Angel Rayngel (who had given us a ride out of Julian the other day) stopped by with a big smile and asked if we could pack up any extra hiker food so he could give it to hikers back in the town of Julian. He kept laughing and taking pictures of us, calling us “the grocery store” which was so funny because we really did look like a grocery store.
We also took obligatory photos with the official PCT dumpster for all the mail drop boxes and hiker trash. Can you believe that we got our own dumpster – it’s amazing! There were so many hikers hanging out in the shade with their mail drops at this random parking lot next to the gas station and met tons of people including our buddy Chainsaw, who we met the other day. I traded him a Spam singles packet which he exchanged for a special ramen that you can only find in Asian grocery stores for Shannon to try.
As we were sorting out our food, the gas station lady came out yelling, “Ahem! Table 4 your hot dogs are ready!” which was funny because there were only a few dumpy picnic tables in a derelict parking lot next to the dumpsters. Shannon and I ran over to get our pure hot dog gold, which had taken 20 minutes to cook. The gas station lady gave us a third hot dog for another hiker guy who had ordered one, but when he never showed up we ate his spicy delicious fancy hot dog sausage. It was so good and no, we don’t regret anything.
Finally I met my outfit twin named Ziploc who was wearing palm tree shorts that are pink and a bright orangey red shirt like me! Full of a breakfast of hot dogs and ice cream, we walked back to the campsite where we left our tent. Back at the campsite, everyone had already taken off to hike the dry hot and shadeless stretch of trail. Our tent, of course, was the only tent left behind. To our surprise and delight, our new buddy Chainsaw must have gotten a ride ahead of us, and was lying in the shade, enjoying what the gas station lady had called “The Breakfast of Champions” aka a tall boy Modeo at 10am. He was so funny and said his hiking mileage today was definitely not going to be a long day today as he chugged the rest of his beer.
As Chainsaw moved into the shade and decided to wait a few hours to hike, Shannon and I packed up and headed out of the Warner Springs area into the hot desert scrubland. Most of the area had been burned in a fire, and the remaining trees were few and far between, but thankfully some of them had been spared. We passed a ropes course and slogged on in the heat, listening to audiobooks and podcasts to get us through the day, our nerdy shade casting umbrellas were out.
At a small creek, huge shade trees stretched out and about a dozen other hikers lay chilling in the shade. We joined them making lunch and relaxing but everyone seemed too restless to actually nap in the hot part of the day. Saving Grace and her partner Ben led a 30 minute yoga class in which all the hikers joined to get some much-needed stretching in. Treebeard, Princess, Benji, Crystal, Eliza (aka Cambridge), Kinsey, Zoltan, Thomas, Colton and a couple others joined in the magical class. A random hiker guy walked by as we were all doing yoga in the woods and must have thought we were some sort of hippie cult way far out in the woods lol. After the yoga class was done we thanked Saving Grace and headed on our way, feeling more refreshed, stretched out and recharged than ever.
The afternoon was a bit of a slog but Princess and I busted up the hillsides and stopped after only having traveled 10 miles for total for the day, and an additional 2.4 for hot dogs and Post Office boxes. We snagged a beautiful tent spot on the side of a cliff view with some other hikers, trudging .4 miles round trip down to water at the Lost Valley spring, which was kind of a crappy water source.
Unfortunately we had to set up tent twice when we realized that we had placed our tent on top of a massive ant colony that had crawled all over everything. The second campsite was absolutely gorgeous with a beautiful view of sunset over the desert mountains. We helped thru hiker Sophia, who was a super fast hiker trying to finish the trail by August 31, set up her brand new single pole Six Moons Designs Lunar Solo tent. I had this same tent on the Appalachian Trail and my first time setting it up it took me over an hour to figure out the complex tensioning and positioning. She was super grateful and was really kind.
Soon Treebeard, Kinsey, Eliza, Saving Grace and Ben joined us and I flew my drone at sunset with everyone’s permission getting some cool shots despite not really knowing what I was doing. I met thru hiker Nails, who had a brightly painted electric yellow-green manicure who was feeding ants crumbs of bright pale pink astronaut ice cream. All you could see was a line of pink crumbs moving determinedly across the gray sand which was kind of cool.
Princess and I made dinner, watched the sunset and laughed so hard with the other hikers. It seemed like pretty much everyone there was enjoying some sort of pain relieving “medicine” or alcohol because everyone’s feet hurt so much. The first couple weeks on trail are the most difficult because your feet need to toughen up and the process isn’t a fun one – blisters, chafing and soreness are in store for almost everyone.
Treebeard and his crew were going to wake up at 4:30am to hike out to Mike’s Place which was a Trail Angel’s house that he opened up to PCT hikers to stay only seven miles away by trail. We’d heard that Mike’s Place was kind of sketchy but there was free soda, food and a water source, so we weren’t sure if we were going to go or not. Treebeard called us out on sleeping late which was about right – we do wake up late and hike fast – and we said please don’t wake us up in the morning when you crazy people get up at 4:30am. The stars came out, the wind settled and we passed out with full bellies and smiles.