Day 24- May 13th

Day 3 of the alternate! So today we woke up laaaaate! Let me just say, a few beers on the trail hit you waaaaay harder than a few beers when you aren't hiking 15 miles a day! 

Of course by late I mean probably around 8:30am, the sun was well out and hot. We had set up our tents about 200 ft from the house under some big nice trees. As we stumbled towards the house with our packs Jason called out: "C'mon, coffee's ready and breakfast is almost there!"

How spoiled are we?! I'm talking coffee, honey dew melons, scrambled duck eggs with cheese, sautéed veggies; they treated us so well! 

Feeling very tired and pretty lazy from the late night, we hung around in good company and pretty soon it was already noon. Even though it seems silly, we had to head out SOMETIME! The hottest time of day it was...

Before we left Josh set up his tripod and took an awesome photo of all of us with a timer. Sorry, all you get is my amateur selfie:

Me, Claire, Jessica, Jason, and Josh 

Shortly after we left, I got my first bee sting on trail! It didn't hurt much but I was definitely unsuspecting. I hadn't been stung by a bee for probably over 5 years, and I was relieved to see I still wasn't allergic :)

We walked up and up and up! The paved road soon because dirt, and we were on mountain roads! A few cars passed up every once in a while, as there were some homes up in the hills, but for the most part we had the road all to ourselves.

Coming up over a hill we saw a red cooler with a sign on it near a driveway. Upon closer examination it said "HIKERS: Water & Snacks".

How awesome! I've said this before, but we are no longer on the PCT, the alternate goes way around, yet somehow, all these people who have noticed a large influx of hikers walking along their boonie roads, have reacted with such kindness towards us complete strangers! 

An excited child ran out with a mother following close behind. The kid had counted 10 hikers already before us! This really surprised me because I knew of 5 other people out in the detour, but no idea that that many other people were walking it, especially in that one morning! 

The mom told us how excited he was to put a cooler out with some Mountain Dew, water, and Clif bars. I took a picture of the proud boy and his mom with Claire and Josh, we thanked them, and then continued on.

A few more people slowed down to talk or just ask what the heck we were doing!! My favorite was: "What are you guys doing sitting down, you still got 2400 miles to go!" Eventually the houses stopped, the road got a little rougher, and we didn't see another car all day.

We came across a large number of Joshua trees, and as we were told by Jason yesterday, these guys are bigger than the trees in the actual Joshua Tree National Park!!

Initially I was bummed when I found out that the PCT didn't go through Joshua Tree, but we now have our Joshua Tree viewing 100% satiated. See, the detour wasn't all bad! 

It was a super hot one, and we started in the midday heat, yet we still somehow were able to hike 13.5 miles before 7pm! 

As we were cooking dinner, we got to see the most amazing sunset so far on the trail! 

Well it's after 10, man I reallllly need to start this earlier every day, haha. Tomorrow we only have 4 more miles of the alternate, and then we go 4 more miles on the PCT and that's where we will be entering Big Bear Lake from! So stoked! The late start and sunset R&R today was nice, but we'll be feeling even better in a room with a shower and bed in Big Bear!

-Thanks for reading!