Day Two - Friday, May 25

We awoke to a beautiful morning with high hopes for the day ahead. Unfortunately, we only got about 4 hours of good sleep since the group of marines camped next to us were drinking whiskey, doing coke, and partying loud most of the night.



Here's me and SB in our "camp shoes" that we made out of running shoe insoles and rubber bands.

We climb from 3000' to 6000' today in two major climbs and will do at least a 22 mile section. We are definite carrying more water! We met Jerry in a valley at mile 12 where there was supposed to be water but it was a 3/4 mile hike off trail. Jerry had brought a hand-held bottle for me and there was a small creek at mile 17 so we continued on. This trail has sections that are a combination of the Grand Canyon, Mt Diablo, and Sierra trails. I love it!

Indigenous wildlife we met on the trail.

We were glad to reach Long Canyon Creek since we were all out of water. We took a break to fill our bottles and cool off. Even though the creek was running we decided to use our steripens for the first time. They worked cool and fortunately the water didn't have many floaties. The last 4 miles of trail was under trees with a lot of welcome shade.

Since jerry had run backwards for two days, he had met and talked with 5 PCT hikers along the way. Jerry had reserved a campsite at Burnt Rancheria in case me and SB wanted to stay. I decided that we wanted go farther and not camp in campgrounds after last night's experience. Jerry left us with 2 miles to go to run on, get the money back for the campsite and go to the Mt Laguna Store which closed at 5 PM for cold drinks, frozen fruitbars and vaseline for SB's babboon butt. He drove back to meet us as we came off the trail at the campgrounds and convinced us to drive over to meet the 5 hikers who were chillin' in front of the store.

left to right: Calif Chris, Suicide Boy, Colorado Ryan, Wisconsin Gary, Virginia Mountain Boys - Cachet and Da Animal, and of course, Dirt Diva. VMBs found the umbrella in the trash at Lake Morena and are going to carry it through the desert!

Three of them just graduated from college last week and decided the PCT hike would be their graduation present. My kind of guys!

We went back to the trailhead where we left with the plan to do another 4-5 miles before setting up camp. Jerry took off to shower and drive my Nitro back to Fremont. We stopped at Penny Pines (mile 48.9) because there was supposed to be water. It was getting dark and we scouted around for the water but couldn't find it. I called Jerry to bring us water (JK!) but he was already up to Oceanside and said NOT! LOL!

np, we got filled up before Jerry left so we can find it in the morning. Woohoo, a fun 2nd day!