We were up early again because everyone camped around us was up and moving around 5:30 or something ridiculous. I think I just dislike camping in large groups of strangers. Everyone has their own ideas of appropriate camp behavior. Not a huge deal as I knew we would be in town by afternoon. Before that could happen we had a 2 mile side trip to get water from a spring. We slack packed, left our bags in the bushes at the top of the road, down to the spring and only filled about 2 liters each.
I was excited to get to town for a shower & to take care of some foot issues so I was cruising up and down the hills to Scissors Crossing. Once we were finally to the road we came across some friendly day hikers who told us someone was waiting with trail magic and we suspected it was Magic Man who we met at Lake Morena. We were correct and both readily accepted Gatorades from him. I was itching to get going so we turned down his offer of chairs and decided to try our luck at hitching a ride. I stuck out my thumb on our short walk to the intersection and the second car to pass stopped. Success!
Juan was our driver and he was very chatty with Jake in the front of the truck. Super nice guy!
We headed to the Julian Lodge to drop our bags since we couldn’t check in quite yet. Next stop, the brewery! We tried out a few different beers and had a delicious lunch while we waited for check in. On our way back to the lodge we stopped at one of the markets to check out what our food options were for resupply. Jacks had a solid selection of hiker food favorites but we weren’t ready to make any decisions so we grabbed some snacks and headed down to the coffee shop. It was chilly so I wanted a hot drink & Regulars Wanted delivered a steaming hot cappuccino. They found out we were thru hikers and gave a us free protein bars!
Once we got our room I showered almost immediately, it was glorious. We exploded our packs and made plans to do some laundry in the bucket they provided. Lounging with no real plans felt amazing. We decided to order pizza and salad for dinner and did that after being lazy bums for a while. It was a fantastic decision. After pizza we did laundry, the water looked like mud and that was after we had done a good pre rinse of all the clothes! We strategically hung everything around the room hoping it will dry quickly. We got to bed late but we would get to sleep in Monday so it wasn’t a big deal. It’s only been a few days of sleeping on the ground but a nice cozy bed was a serious treat.
PCT Hike 