Friday 3/23 – Mile 20 to 29.8 (total 9.8)

We woke up unsure if we’d be hiking that day due to Marcel’s chaffing, so we spent the morning getting acquainted with our fellow hikers and relaxing under the gazebo. We met Shante, a middle-aged, friendly woman who took it upon herself to help Tank, an older guy from South Korea who hardly spoke any English, but was possibly a Sherpa for Mount Kilimanjaro. Google translate helped some, but it was frustrating when the translation didn’t make sense or gave an error message. Tank was hauling his recumbent bike of 40 pounds, but it was unclear how he was going to hike with his bike. Bikes of any kind aren’t allowed on the trail, so maybe he wasn’t even hiking the PCT? Who knows. He was fun and gave us shots of tequila and Shante a foot massage while he was drinking a strange mix of beer shaken with tequila.

We ate a can of clam chowder heated directly on our stove for breakfast. After Tank showed much interest in our unopened can of beef stew, asking three separate times about it, Marcel finally picked up on what he was trying to ask. We happily gave him the heavy can to cook on his own stove. At some point someone asked our ages, and when Marcel revealed he was 37 Tank was so shocked he studied Marcel’s face from an uncomfortably close range, pinched his face, and after what seemed an awkwardly long time Tank declared “a good man is a healthy man” and we all had a good laugh.

Another couple, Colleen and Fred from the Dallas area were just about to leave the gazebo when we asked if we could take their picture. Colleen looked embarrassed and said, “But my hair! I lost my comb the first day and don’t want to take a picture without it being brushed.” Marcel and I looked at each other and then he looked back at Colleen asking, “Is it blue…?” Colleen skeptically said, “yes….”

And then we told her we found a comb on the trail, and since I forgot mine, we kept it. We gave her back her lost comb and got a picture.

Among the rest of the hikers were Walk About Jim, a gray-bearded man with two small dogs, Baby & Handsome. Handsome wasn’t very sweet on strangers and actually attacked a ranger that came by to collect permit payments. The ranger took it way better than we expected and left the campsite laughing with another ranger.

Then there was Ed, from Snyder, Tx; Satyr, a young guy with a beard to fit his trail name; Albert from Brownsville, Sarah and Jumanji, who we didn’t know at the time was Possum’s son.

Back to Marcel’s chaffing. Some recommended treatments were zinc oxide (baby rash ointment), desitin, antibiotic cream, Vaseline, and even Vagasil. Luckily, we didn’t need to buy any of those because the coconut oil from Possum miraculously worked! We both felt as good as the weather, cool yet sunny and decided we could put in some miles without any chafe worries. We ate Pop-Tarts, a protein shake and Doritos for lunch, gathered our dried gear and left Lake Morena around 1:30.

We saw almost zero hikers. We passed one southbound hiker with dreads hoping to get to Morena before the malt shop closed. I hope he made it because I devoured a damn good Oreo shake the day before.

At some point along the trail I dropped my phone, cracked the screen and had an internal lecture about the difference between putting a phone protector on my to-do list and putting one on my phone’s screen. Sigh. At least the crack isn’t that bad and I still have a working phone.

When we got to the Kitchen Creek spur at mile 29.8 there was already a group of four Europeans around a fire. They told us we could join, but we were too tired after setting up our tent across the creek. We ate Idahoan garlic mashed potatoes with Fritos. It tasted like fried mashed potato balls from Aladdin’s! Not wanting to eat too little, we also had chicken Top Ramen with freeze-dried ground beef, or what we like to call dog food because of the way it looked- dry, pellet shaped & unappealing. But the yummy, beefy ramen was so delicious we wondered if Mountain House beef stroganoff just got bumped down to #2 best hiking food?