Day 2 (3 April) Mile 10.82 - 19.96

Unpaved Jeep Trail to Lake Morena State Park

We had kind of a restless night sleep last night. Barbra and I were getting used to sharing a tent and getting used to the sleep system of sleeping bag and sleeping pad and tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable. After probably sleeping about 5 hours we got up around 7:30 AM, ate breakfast, broke camp, and did a little yoga. At 9:30 we were feeling pretty good and ready to hit the trail.

Two fingers for Day 2

We started out feeling really good and went 1.5 hours before we started looking for some shade. We finally found some and Pagan man was sitting there. We had a feeling that there wouldn't be any shade for a bit, so we joined him.

Barbra chatting with Pagan man.

Daily self-portrait

It was comfy enough so we took our shoes off and had a snack. While there Eric, the bee sting guy from yesterday, stopped by. By the way, his trail name is now Triple-A...Asthma, Allergies, and Anemia...all his problems he has to overcome to successful thru-hike.

Eric, AKA Triple-A

It was finally time to move on. We knew that we only had about 1.5 miles till another nice shady spot so off we went. We came across this sign about 1/2 mile later:

Almost to Lake Moreno

Lake Moreno is where we were meeting back up with Tim and spending the night. We only have 5.1 miles to go.

About 1 hour later, after much down hill we came across the shady spot, sat down, kicked off out shoes, ate lunch, and talked to Pagan man, Triple-A, and a couple of others.

It was hard to leave since we knew that we had a 1.5 mile hard uphill climb with no shade in front of us, but we finally put our shoes back on and hit the trail, and up we climbed:

Barbra on the trail

We made it to the top in about 1 hour which we felt was pretty good. We were getting thirsty and were down to 1 liter for the last 3 miles, but we knew that Tim planned to meet us on the trail so we weren't too concerned.

We continued on and found a nice shady tree so stopped for about 10 minutes then moved along, and right around the bend, there was Tim:

Hi Tim!

He gave us each a nice cold bottle of water that hit the spot and we continued down the trail until finally we spotted out destination:

Tim & Barbra with Lake Moreno in the background

Just about 1 mile more and we were home free.

We finally made it down to a campsite already setup by Tim:

What a campsite!

Wow...a lot different than last night and we felt we deserved it after finishing one of the harder 20 mile stretches of the PCT. To make it even sweeter, we were able to take a nice shower although it ended with a crazy woman who told us she was robbed on the trail. When we finally got the story out of her it winds up that she brought a troubled youth with an anger problem on the trail. For some reason she thought it was a good idea to do a 20 mile 2 day hike through the desert with him. When they woke up this morning with still 10 miles to hike the kid wasn't happy so took her bags and ran off. I don't know how she made it down, but I guess they caught the kid and all is well.

Anyway...after the shower we walked the 4 blocks to the local grocery store, bought a 6-pack of Pyramid Apricot Hefeweizen, walked back to the campground, and enjoyed the evening. Now i am lying here on a giant blowup air mattress with Tim, feeling awesome, and looking forward to another day of hiking tomorrow.