Just a sweatin'! - mile 650

This was a really tough day.  We had a 35 mile stretch with 2 water caches and only  1 natural water source.  We don't like to depend solely on the water caches so we carried some into the dry stretch and graciously took a little from the caches on  our way to the cistern at Walker Pass.  We were REALLY blessed that on this day it just so happened to be overcast for the first half of the day and surprisingly cool and windy for the second half.  We were hiking with  our friend, Grams, in the afternoon so chatting with him took our mind off of how thirsty we all were.

Our new brand, Desert Sunrise Oatmeal.

Grams showing us that his water was lighter.

We knew that we were getting closer to Walker Pass, where there is a road crossing, because when we were about a mile away we passed a very tanned nude man who was trail running up the mountain we were coming down.  It was sort of a good sign because we knew we had to be close to a road!  As we got to the trailhead we noticed a paper plate with the words "hiker trash wanted" with an arrow on it.  This is what thru-hikers call each other and this could only mean one thing.  Trail Magic!  We spotted some pop up tents and cars and b-lined for them as we walked into a round of applause by about 20 fellow hikers!  We spotted Yogi and Jackalope and knew this would be good!  They are 2 PCT thru-hikers who are big in the pct community and they showed it by serving us all we could eat spaghetti and salad for dinner along with apple/ strawberry pancakes for breakfast!  They and all of the other people helping to feed us were amazing. We were blown away by all of this after having such a long day!   We even got to meet the legendary Coppertone!  He is quite an interesting fellow and a former thru-hiker who travels up the trail in his mobile home and treats hikers at various road crossings with root beer floats.  We even got to see Grams, who is from Germany, taste his first bonafide root beer float.  That is just one of those beautiful things that crosses cultures and language barriers!

Jackalope, Yogi, Bear Bait, and the other trail magicians.