Someone cowboy camping in the picnic pavilion talked and yelled in his sleep. Whenever I fell asleep on my back, I could hear rain falling on the tent until Bunny would elbow my ribs and make me roll over. There was a party across the lake. Park rangers were using blow horns to divert traffic. In spite of all these interruptions to my sleep, I woke up refreshed.
We were far enough from everyone that I could get on with my morning ritual of preparing my lucky wife her breakfast in bed which she has not only come to expect, but now demands. If I oversleep by even a single minute, she beats me. I’ve trained myself to wake up before the alarm rather than get boxed in my ears. I’m my wife’s bee-atch with absolutely no freewill left to me. Every morning, I make coffee and hope that Bunny is happy with my efforts. Today, we had enough water that I was able to prepare her athletic greens which she favors above all else. Please, send greens for my wife and help for me. I hope she doesn’t censor my pleas like she usually does.
The pizza infusion into the hiking community enabled everyone to wake up happy and refreshed. Almost. Bunny was not pleased. I reminded her we had porcelain and running water and that did help her mood a bit. It was the leftover Sprite which saved me, though. The extra sugar gave her the energy to fake being happy to all who saw her. I quivered in fear as I usually do.
It was supposed to be an easy day of hiking to Cajon Pass. Fake News had told us he had reserved a room at the Best Western and asked if we wanted the other bed. I didn’t know how the day would turn out. Would Bunny want to sleep in a soft bed, do laundry, and shower? Or would she prefer to make me sleep on the ground in a tent where no one can hear my screams of agony? Tough call to make. We exchanged phone numbers and I said we’d contact him when we made it to the pass.
The hike really wasn’t that bad today, but Bunny has run out of herbs, or as she calls it, her CBD oil. Her hips were not doing well today. We only averaged 1.5 mph for the first couple of hours, but when we made it over the hurdle of our first big climb out of Cleghorn Picnic Area into the adjacent valley, her hips had loosened up enough that she was her usual walking machine (kind of creaky and needing oil, but moving nonetheless).
Yet again, we passed a small group performing true trail magic. A father and his two sons had just recently adopted a 6 mile section of the PCT and they were out today, on Easter Sunday, grooming their trail. We thanked them for all their effort and complimented them on the high quality of trail I encourage everyone to do the same whenever you meet trail workers. This is really the only payment they receive. Without them, we can’t thru-hike.
We passed no one for the first 10 miles today. Once we climbed up to the rim of Cajon Pass, we saw Sun Bear and Cheers having lunch and admiring the view. We climbed on up to their vantage point and lost our collective breaths. I remember driving down I-15 a few weeks back and I was scared shitless when we dropped off the high plateau into this pass at 65 mph. I didn’t do much better today at 2.75 mph.
This is one of the most amazing views we have seen on the entire trip so far. Every direction is a postcard. The expansiveness of the area is mind boggling. We let Sun Bear and Cheers finish their lunch and continued down. Only now, Bunny has the smell of dead cow in her nostrils. She truly was a killer Bunny with huge nasty teeth that only a Big Mac could tame. I couldn’t keep up.
She started passing people like they were old men and she was a young healthy woman. First was Snow Dog (mid 60s) and then Strider (also, mid 60s). The approaching McDonalds was enough to transform my 80 year old wife to a young woman of 39 (umpteen times). You’re missing the point if you only notice that she’s passing older people. Look beyond the age and notice that she is passing people. This is a new phenomena I haven’t seen before. We didn’t have to hurt or injure them for us to pass. (Their shoes did that to them but that detail is not important…we’re passing people!)
We arrived at McDonalds a full 30 minutes earlier than we had thought we were going to when we left camp this morning. We averaged exactly 2 mph, making up the slow time we experienced the first 2 hours of hiking. It was only 2:30. Granted, everyone else we knew was already inside finishing up their meals. McDonalds had cordoned off a side of the restaurant for hiker use in an attempt to isolate the smell (to no avail). In our defense, as bad as we smelled, I could still smell the strong odor of the restroom when I went in. We are no worse than raw sewage. In fact, several degrees less. Who needs showers more than once a week?
It turns out, we do. We decided to see if Fake News still had the extra bed available. We couldn’t get hold of him, so we just got our own room for the night. My hygiene standards are slightly better than most third world inhabitants, but I was to the point of needing a shower and clean clothes to feel human again. After those priorities were satisfied, we ventured out to the world of fine dining once again—gas station Del Taco. Society has been berry berry good to me.
EFG