Chap. 3 – Brunette and Matte Mint

the morning

Once again, we all woke up around 5:30am to start walking. The original plan was to hike 14.9 to a campsite, but plans eventually changed! We arrived at Lake Morena shortly before 9 am. Half of us ate first, while the other half showered first. My better half had lunch first, so I bought a basket of tender chicken and a cappuccino at the restaurant. I also did a little replenishment of just a couple more dinners.

The bathrooms were quite nice on the women’s side, so I loved the opportunity to shower. The men took a little longer than the women because they only showered once. Someone had decided to shit in one of the men’s showers and proceeded to make wall art with it. Oh.

Drying off after the coin-operated showers was also pretty easy. Not only did I have a small towel, but the sun finally came out and dried my hair pretty quickly! We got back on the trail right after our showers and after applying some leucotape to our hot spots.

Late

Our afternoon had consistently beautiful views, blazing sun, flat trails, and several good shady spots to rest for a few minutes. We finally reached a volunteer who gave us our PCT tags for our backpacks! It was a pleasant surprise since we had been told we wouldn’t receive them until Idyllwild.

Boostie and I were informed that we were not to laminate our permits, so we had to reprint them in Julian. It seems a little counterintuitive to have plain paper in the package that will tear and get wet… but oh well. Turns out we also needed a separate fire permit which we didn’t have at all. I assumed the PCT permit covered that, but I guess not. Despite all the research I did, I really can’t believe I never saw those two rules for getting our labels! Unfortunately, now we have them and we also have our labels.

Evening

The final walk to the camp was long. We were all tired. Boostie and I have been hiking in a good-sized group, not unlike our tram on the AT. We are hiking with Marathon, Rawhide, Squirrel and five other people. Squirrel just got his trail named this afternoon at camp because the last two nights he’s been climbing the closest climbable object. Honestly, he’s pretty good at it too.

We all walked 0.7 miles down the road to Cibbets Campground, which ended up taking us further than we had originally planned. 17.2 miles on day 2 felt tough and by the end everyone just wanted to eat and go to sleep. Except Squirrel, of course. He climbed a tree. The temperature also dropped pretty quickly after arriving at camp, so it wasn’t long before everyone was bundled up in their tents!

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