Third Gate Trail to Mountain Valley Retreat
I saw my first sunrise of the hike...not by plan, but nature called early this morning. I don't have a picture to share, but believe me...it was a nice view while taking care of business.
Barbra and I woke with anticipation for today's hike. Today we hike past mile 100 and get to go to Mountain Valley Retreat for 2 nights. We were rearing to go and was actually eating breakfast by 7:30 AM. Maybe we will get an earlier start today.
While earing breakfast we noticed some weird pods hanging off a vine hanging on a tree. Any guess as to what these alien pod looking fruit things are?
Barbra and I woke with anticipation for today's hike. Today we hike past mile 100 and get to go to Mountain Valley Retreat for 2 nights. We were rearing to go and was actually eating breakfast by 7:30 AM. Maybe we will get an earlier start today.
While earing breakfast we noticed some weird pods hanging off a vine hanging on a tree. Any guess as to what these alien pod looking fruit things are?
Mysterious plant pods.
Somehow, even though we woke up earlier it was still 9:00 AM when we took our daily picture. Today we were lucky enough to have Wildcard in the picture with us:
Ten fingers for 10'days.
Today's hike starts climbing for the first 4 miles continuing on the ridge as yesterday and eventually drops down towards Warner Springs. Throughout the day the views remained incredible.
Incredible view behind Barbra
My incredible view of Barbra
Only 1,5 hours later we could see where we spent last night and it looked pretty far off. I really love when we can see parts of the trail that we have been on.
We were there last night.
As we continued hiking we came across "Grandma" taking a break. She is 70 and plans on hiking the entire trail in sections by her 75th birthday. Wow...what a strong woman she is. Up until recently she hasn't ever camped and now here she is hiking the PCT solo. I want to be that kind of 70 one day!
Grandma
Just before the 5 mile point, we came across the landmark "Billy Goat's Cave." I have no idea who blasted this cave or why, but it was pretty cool.
Billy Goat's Cave
As I stated earlier, the views just continued. As I like the times we can look back and see where we were, I also love it when you can see the continuos trail ahead as in this picture:
The PCT keeps going and going.
I stopped at a point in the trail that wa overlooking the town of Ranchcita to try calling Tim, but Barbra was feeling her stride and kept hiking. As I was trying to catch up I caught a glimpse of her on the other side:
Where's Barbra?
We finally found a flat spot to eat lunch which wasn't easy since the day pretty much stayed on the ridge. As soon as we sat down Wildcard showed up about 10 minutes later Grandma showed up. We enjoyed lunch and conversation and then continued on towards the Mountain Valley Retreat. As we were just waking along Brad spotted the 100 on the side of the trail. I can't believe we almost missed it.
100 miles complete.
Just to prove it, I took a screen shot of Halfmile's app showing that we are exactly 100 miles from the southern terminus of the PCT:
As we continued the trail seemed to get more beautiful:
What an incredible trail.
Sign of the day.
By 3:00 PM we finally made it to Montezuma Road crossing where we left the trail and walked 1.3 miles to Mountain Valley Retreat. We will be spending 2 nights here enjoying home-cooked healthy meals, a yoga class, a massage, and most importantly not hiking tomorrow. Tomorrow is what is called a "Zero Day." We will not hike and let out body have a day off to heal.
Mountain Valley Retreat. Our home for the next 2 days
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