Day 12 (13 April) - Mile 101.22 - 112.51

Mountain Valley Retreat - Campsite Along Agua Caliente Creek

We awoke in the teepee as refreshed as we could possibly awake; we took out last shower until Monday...at least for me. Barbra will be home to take a shower Saturday night; and Chery of Mountain Valley Retreat cooked us pancakes and scrambled eggs before driving us to the trailhead at 9:30 AM.

Of of course we started with our daily picture:

Twelve fingers for 12 days.

Today's hike took us through a valley of beautiful meadows. Totally different terrain than what we have been hiking through.

Daily PCT sign with Barbra in the background

I was really enjoying the whole meadow thing until I spotted this rattlesnake:

I definitely could have done without seeing this

But then the beauty of the meadow returned with vengeance

Incredible meadow flowers.

This 10-mile-ish stretch from Barrel Springs to Warner Springs is very popular. As a matter of fact, we passed by 2 large groups of day hikers enjoying the trail. It is not just the beautiful meadow landscape that draw them here, but it is also this cool rock formation called "Eagle Rock."

Hugs atop Eagle Rock

We hung out at Eagle Rock for about 30 minutes and then returned to hiking. I head an airplane and looked up to see an airplane towing a glider.

Oh...I forgot to mention that Tim met us at Mountian Valley Retreat last night to give us our resupply of food, toilet paper, etc and got to talking to George who lives on the property with Chery. George is a glider pilot/instructor and mentioned to Tim that if he met him at the airport around 11 he may be available to give him a ride.

When we saw this airplane it was 11:50 AM so we knew it could be Tim and George, so we waved and shot the picture.

Tim...George...is that you?

The hike continued as the trail took us through some trees along a creek.

Beautiful

Amazing trail

By 1:00 PM, we managed to 8.5 miles and arrived at the Warner Springs Community Center. This small town really puts out the red carpet for PCT hikers offering a place to camp, showers, computers, wifi, hiker store, homemade cookies, and much more. All this with volunteers from the community.

What a welcoming town

When we walked through the parking lot Tim was there. It was him that was up in the glider! The airport was just up the road so he decided to come to the community center knowing we would be showing up there.

So we are lunch with Tim, ate some homemade cookies, and used the wifi to upload the blog entries from the past 4 days.

After leaving the center there was a sign that I got to pose with, but not Barbra since she is "only" a section hiker.

Hopefully I can make the class proud.

The hike continued through the valley with long views of the mountains.

Nice!

Self-portrait with Barbra

The incredible PCT.

Barbra catching up.

We made it to our campsite around 4:00 PM and just relaxed for a bit. Although the hike was fairly easy today, It felt like we pushed ourselves. After the zero yesterday we thought we would be totally refreshed and be able to hike with ease, but that wasn't really the case. We were actually pretty pooped after the over 11 mile hike today. It was a bit warmer today than it has been in the past week, but who know. Some days you feel great and others you are just tired.

Brad showed up after taking a zero back home, which was cool, so we are all together again.

Here us tonight's campsite. Picture this along with frogs chirping and a steam running and that all equals a great place to be tonight.