Day 30, 18.64 miles

Today I woke up in a SUPER wet tent! There were no clouds in the sky and I didn’t put up my rainfly. I don’t think it rained, there was just crazy condensation! Everyone that I met during the day had the same story.

I knew I had less than 20 miles to go until Casa de Luna. The temperature was nice, and the trail well graded, so I got a late start. As you all are probably coming to expect everyday now, the morning was absolutely beautiful!!

I soon came across the first water source out of Agua Dulce. Bear Spring! As I was there collecting nice cold water, I saw a hummingbird come in for his morning shower. It was neat! I tried to take a picture, but it turns out it’s pretty hard to capture a hummingbird in a photo clearly.. haha

See the hummingbird?

I continued down and down, it was almost 9am, and I was just about to stop for some breakfast when I saw this:

What?!? 

E

I cannot BELIEVE I’m getting so spoiled! Not only were there free sodas and burgers (of which I had two), they also had ice cold water, watermelon, apples, bananas, oranges, chips, chocolates and truffles!! The magic was put on by Byron and his family. They have been doing this for three years now one day each year, I hit the jackpot by rolling through on this Saturday.

Left to right: Blue (from Portland), Byron’s daughter and wife, Chef, Amy, and Jamie

Byron

They were such awesome people and I had a great breakfast/lunch to boost me up the next huge hill we had ahead of us. Looking back, if I hadn’t slept in, I think I would’ve missed the magic! Sometimes it pays to be lazy. :)

Some nice shade that saved Claire and I in 2016!

After resting in the cool shaded manzanita area, I started back out towards Casa de Luna and the famous Taco Salad!! As pictured above, the trail was quite lovely.

Soon I hit the road and got a pretty quick hitch and got dropped off a couple blocks from Casa de Luna. As I walked up I saw a bunch of familiar faces, and a bunch of people I had never seen before. I went ahead and picked out a sweet shirt from the giant selection of aloha shirts and other wear, and set up my tent. The manzanita forest is filled with rocks painted from hikers of years past. There are some really cool ones!

The manzanita forest!

Ahhhhh!! (Yeah, there were some scary ones too)

I said hello to Terrie Anderson, thanked her in advance for once again opening up her house and amazing manzanita forest to all us stinky hikers. I got a ride down to the store with Joseph to buy a little more food and some beer, and by the time we had walked back it was almost dinner time! Terrie gave her instructions and we all lined up for food (after washing our hands of course).

Hikers GALORE!!

I had three huge plates like this!! :)

My Casa de Luna garb. (Made in India!)

My sweet campsite in the manzanita maze..

After dinner she played some music and we all lined up to do a dance for Terrie. When deemed worthy we received our super cool 2018 trail bandanas. In 2016 they were purple and green. I like this years color scheme much better with orange and turquoise!

Joseph dancing for his bandana

So cool!!

Whew! It’s been a day! A lot of great food and some nice relaxation too! Hoping to get a nice early start tomorrow, but not sure exactly how early, haha.

Thanks for reading!!