Day 17: happy camping

So I woke up feeling a bit fractious (aka hungover??!). We were all a bit frazzled and have probably spent too much time together in a very small space. We went out for breakfast and were all uncharacteristically quiet. Unlimited pancakes though! It was great. Three pancakes scrambled eggs bacon and sausage defeated me though.

We went back to the room to try to contact a trail Angel to drop us back but we had no luck. There was crap on the TV and I got grumpy. I wanted to be back on trail for sure! Eventually I got up and said I was hitching right then. Obviously everyone followed because they want to hitch with me!
Things didn’t look good. A few more people came out, and who is going to stop for a group of 8 hikers? A school bus?! I was cross – what happened to hitching etiquette?! Hey Baby and I split off and the two of us got a ride pretty close to the trail – we had to walk 2 miles afterwards but much better! And the guy said he would go back for the others – I continue to love people!

It was nice to talk to Hey Baby properly – finding out people’s reasons for doing this trip just makes me so happy! We eventually found the trail after boring dirt road miles and we were off.

Oh my god it is so nice being back on trail!

It happened to be a particularly perfect section, the weather is spectacular, I have a full selection of jolly ranchers – yes! I hiked solo for an hour or so and just loved it. The views over big bear lake were to die for.

I bumped into lots of day hikers who were super impressed. An Israeli family gave me chocolate and a bite of Cucumber – day made. I had an awkward moment where I was walking behind a man who was going more slowly and he didn’t seem to notice

Me no matter how many times I politely said hello or coughed. In the end I plucked up the courage to be very American, scaring hiM completely – he had headphones in!

I cross a dirt road and can see another figure in the distance – I catch up and guess who?! Turtle!! It turns out he had got a ride to a different part of the trail. So much for our plans to have separate hiking days! He’s a great hiking partner as he doesn’t mind if we are silent or noisy. We passed Stefan and Kyle, such a treat to see them again! We talked about everything – it’s always a race for us ‘Ella/randy – tell me a storrrrrrry.’ We started talking about the death penalty but agreed to stop after two minutes, moving on instead to our siblings, life plans and bad dates. Perfect. We bumped into one brother section hiking sobo who told us that ADL was not far ahead – what?! I was so excited to see him!

We had a short lunch break, where I demolished my green tortillas and cheese. I have some sports mixture in this resupply box – woooohooo!

Then on we went. We bumped into the other brother who told us about some day hikers who let him have some of their lunch, then spent a lot of the afternoon fantasising about pastrami and fresh fruit. Then after no time at all we spot a campsite and who is there – Cookie! I was so pleased to be Reunited with Cookie, my abba accomplice.

We are going to go to a Korean karaoke in San Francisco, and I can’t wait. we played highs and lows and we all said our high was seeing her again.

We just had the perfect evening. I’m so happy to be on trail. We had a little cuddle session, randy played with my hair while I plaited Hey Baby’s. I finished my tortillas. I had a cup of tea. Just before I got in my tent I lay down and looked at the stars with randy. We both joked about pretending to be a bear and scaring the other one during the night and now I’m really scared he’s going to get me…

I’ve left the rain fly off my tent (my version of cowboy camping), it’s 9.30, randy is shouting at me to stop fidgeting, I can see the stars and a beautiful moon and things are perfect.

Now at mile: 286.7 (driving really makes those miles go faster!)
Low: not being able to finish my pancakes this morning

High: sitting around playing a game of highs and lows that someone else initiated, but with everyone deferring perfectly to the quirks in my rules