Day 25- May 14th

Day 4 of the alternate! Woo-hoo!! Last night I heard something metal rustling and it freaked both Claire and I out for a good 10 minutes. Jason had told us all about the mountain lions up in the hills near where we were camped. 

In the morning as we were packing up a strong gust blew through and I heard the noise again. Now, being waaaaay more brave in the day time, I went to go investigate! It turns out there was a diamond-shaped metal emblem hanging on a tree and when the wind blew it made that sound. Whew! No mountain lion!

Claire and Josh and I broke camp before 8:30, hiked 4 miles, and rejoined the PCT! Finally! Man it felt so good to finally walk on a path made for humans again instead of vehicles!

Soon after that we came across some awesome vistas like the one pictured at the top of this blog, (sorry I was lazy with the pics today.) About 4 miles after that we made it to Highway 18 where we needed to hitch into Big Bear!

Big Bear is compromised of a few different areas, we were trying to stay at Big Bear Lake because that's where the best hostel is and everything is very nearby. 

The person who picked us up wasn't going all the way to the Lake side, and dropped us off in Big Bear City, (which is smaller than Big Bear Lake.) Immediately we called the hostel to see if they had any vacancy, but they were full!

Luckily, our next option was 0.2 miles from where we got dropped off! We called Nature's Inn and there was vacancy! We told him we'd be right there and we were right there 4 minutes later. 

It's a very awesome, very hiker friendly Inn. I believe we are the only PCT hikers here at the moment, however, they have a whole hiking room with a pool table, DVD's, couches, and many hiker boxes!

All the rooms are themed and our is the Raccoon room. There's an awesome stone fireplace in here, with  at least 16 raccoons either pictured or in a stuffed animal version. And that's just the bedroom not counting the bathroom! This is our first real bed of the whole PCT, and oh man does it feel good! 

After we got the tour, we dropped our stuff off, and then headed out to Big Bear Lake (about 5 miles away). Although we aren't staying there, they have bigger supermarkets and cheaper food on that side, as well as a Big 5 Sporting Good store where we were hoping to find Claire some trekking poles.

Our first ride dropped us off right outside of the Taco Bell! Man Taco Bell never tasted so good! We don't eat there often, but it was good to spend less than $10 each and be completely stuffed upon leaving! 

We walked o the Big 5 and oddly enough they didn't have any good hiking poles! Only the really heavy generic kind that you don't want to use for hiking across the country...

Although bummed, we proceeded to walk back towards Big Bear City as to hit the supermarket on the way back. This next hot dry stretch (luckily on the trail and not a bunch of roads), is 104 miles long until the next resupply! That means 7 days off food to be safe!

Yup, that's seven days of food.. For just me...

Luckily someone scooped us up right out of the parking lot and drove us all the way back (slightly out of her way) to our room at the Inn. I'm telling you it's crazy how nice everyone we encounter has been!

Well, today we walked 8.18 miles. Not a whole bunch, but instead of taking a zero here in Big Bear as originally planned we're going to do a few miles tomorrow. 

We're finally back on trail, back on schedule, and feeling great after a little well deserved R&R. Done with he road walk alternate HOORAY! Now getting to Canada should be the easy part eh? 

Thanks for reading!