Day 3 (4 April) - Mile 19.96 - 30.15

Lake Moreno State Park to Kitchen Creek Road Campsite

It was a really cold night last night. Lots of snuggling and shivering, but waking up at a campground with flushable toilets was really nice. No cat hole digging this morning.

Barbra decided to forgo the protein bar for breakfast and walk back to the store and buy a breakfast burrito and a coffee. Meanwhile I had a carnation instant breakfast and a black & white cookie that my old friend Michael bought me for my birthday when we visited him and Kathleen in Scottsdale on the way to San Diego.

Thanks Michael!

Finally Barbra arrived back to camp a "happy camper" with a breakfast burrito for herself and Tim and a coffee.

I have coffee...everything is great!

Not really roughing it Barbra.

We were finally ready to hike at 10:40AM so we hit the trail for day 3.

Three fingers for day 3

Today we are going 10 miles which in a normal thru-hike would be a pretty good way, but since we are meeting Tim tonight we decided to leave all our gear with him and just take what we need for the day hike. Going from a 35 pound to a 10 pound bag felt great, so the 10 mile day should be great. By the way, this is called slack-packing.

It was another really hot day, but a beautiful hike. For some reason this cactus caught Barbra's fancy so we had to pose with it:

I don't know what Barbra is doing.

Many parts of the trail were just spectacular today:

Barbra tackling a rocky portion

Daily self-portrait

Barbra hiking along

After 2 hours of hiking we came across this sign letting us know that we only have 2 miles to go till Boulder Oaks Campground. This is where we plan on eating lunch and filling up our water bottles since there is flowing, potable water coming from spigots. But first, how about some more beauty of the trail.

Just incredible

Ah lunch. Another call-out to Michael who also gave me some bagels to take with me on the trail. They tasted great with tuna on them.

Thanks again Michael

It sure is pleasant when you have a picnic table to eat lunch on. Especially one under a shade tree! We also got to meet Brad who is from Southern California. He is recently unemployed so decided to thru-hike the PCT. Oh...during lunch Tim actually showed up since we were just a 5 minute drive from where he already had setup tonight's camp. We sure are lucky!

After lunch we had about 4 miles to go which didn't seem too bad even knowing that it was mostly uphill. At a trail crossing we came across this awesome tree with a PCT sign in it. Just so cool!

I love this PCT sign.

At 3:15 we crossed under the first east-west interstate, I-8. Tim and I drove I-8 out of Phoenix to get to San Diego and knew about where we crossed the PCT and now here are Barbra and I. Pretty cool.

Crossing below I-8

Exactly 1 hour later I took this picture showing how far we had come. The pole is pointing to the trail going under I-8.

We've come a far way in 1 hour

The next part of the trail was a continuous climb and it was pretty hot. We came across that herbalicious couple from Lake Placid and told them where we were camping that night and that it has a great stream for water. Their plan was to get water off some side trail coming up and camp a couple of more miles past our turnoff. Cool...see you down the trail. We then came across two women who we had actually met on day 2. They looked tired and worn out and their bags looked like they weighed over 50 pounds. We told them that there was a water source and nice camping down Kitchen Creek Road and they should stay with us. They hummed and hawed. We then mentioned that Tim had our truck there and that he could take their gear to Mount Laguna and they could slack-pack there the next day. They jumped right on that and said, "Yes please!" A bit further on Brad from lunch caught up and we told him our plan including slack-packing to Mount Laguna the next day and we received another resounding, "Yes please!" We finally got to Kitchen Creek Road and the herbalicious couple was there. They decided to join us down the road as well. So, we all made our way down Kitchen Creek Road for 4/10 mile where Tim was waiting for us.

We walked down to the creek, put our feet in the water for a soak, ate some dinner, and hit the tent. Overall a great hiking day where we met/re-met other awesome hikers. Speaking of awesome, here is the site that awesome Tim set up for us:

Tomorrow we hike to Mount Laguna and get to stay in a hotel. Right now that sounds really good.