Agua Dulce to Hikertown, USA

PCT MILES COMPLETE: 239.3

PCT mile 454.5 to PCT mile 517.0
Section mileage: 47.2
Days: 5/30 - 6/1

When worlds collide at the Saufleys

We left the Saufleys while a film crew was recording scenes for an episode of The Bridge, in which a psychopath was holding up in the Saufleys' house. The funny part was that the actor who was playing the psychopath looked like a clean version of a PCT thruhiker. It was wait-for-free-tacos or hit-the-trail. After much debate (and a dozen thruhikers' faces staring at the taco grill through the van window), we chose to hike at dusk. We nighthiked for 5 miles with Pigpen, before heading off on our own up the hill. The headlamps of the other hikers got smaller and farther away as we climbed the mountain. We walked through the desert meadow, wondering what it looked like in the daylight. Wideset eyes glowed in the distance. Too tall and widely-spaced to be a cougar, too big to be a deer. I yelled and it prodded down the hill on hooves.  Big hooves. Elk or big horned sheep? We kept moving. We passed a fox later in the night. An owl. Each time suspecting first that the sounds and eyes were mountain lions. We hiked 11 miles before curling up next to the trail around 1 am.

The next day, we hiked down to the fire station. Hidden in a grove of shrubby oaks guarded by a plastic Frankenstein statue, we discovered the Anderson's water cache and SODA! I sat under a painting of a clown drinking sweet bubbly nectar of the gods, talking to Polaris and FM. We trucked on into the heat of the day. Eventually the trail began to zigzag downwards toward the road. Safe in the shade of a picnic pavilion, Craig said, "We're not hiking during the day again."

We tried to nap. A hiker named Prometheus was dropped off at the pavilion with a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies. He wore real leather boots, a felt jacket, and a little knit beanie and carried a big wooden staff. He looked, at first glance, like a caricature of a hiker. Like, tell a 6 year-old kid to draw a hiker, and it would probably look like Prometheus. He was happily drunk and planned to eat his cookies and then start the road walk detour. He was from, of all places, Plattsburgh, land of Franklins.

Mrs. Anderson swung by with Peanut in her van! We finally left the shelter at 7 pm to strike out into the world evening and night hike, bound for a bar 8-10 miles away. Almost immediately we ran into Rock Ocean, a tall bearded trail angel with a blissful smile. He is following our hiking class northward and offering rides into towns.



On our walk, we saw horses, a lake that stank of Loch Ness feces, messages from other hikers written with trekking poles in the sand. Thank You was written in pipe cleaner on a chain link fence. "You're welcome!" I thought. At long last, we heard music and saw lights. Then voices. A large stone building loomed ahead: the Rock Inn. It was full of locals, with a band playing Creedance covers. A whole table of thruhikers was already there. A big biker and his lady, in high waisted jeans and too much lipstick, challenged a couple hikers to pool. They had bottles of Black Butte porter! I have never been so happy.

We asked the waitress about camping, "is there a bridge we can sleep under?" She directed us to a strip off burnt down Forest Service cabins by the lake, unfortunate casualties from the recent fire that also led to the closure of the PCT. She warned us, "The owner of the property across the street gets drunk every night and will threaten you with her shotgun if you trespass."

Our campsite, obviously

With her words in mind, we all tiptoed across the street by the red glow of our headlamps and cowboy camped on the foundations of old cabins.

The next morning, we stopped after a few miles to hike in the shade of a few big live oaks and napped for several hours. The other hikers were long gone. A man in his 50s pulled up a pick up truck. "Do you want some tea or beer?" he called to us. We popped out from the tent. The first thing I noticed was the gaping hole in his ear. It was the size of a quarter. Only a few teeth remained.

Steve handed us cold Coors Light and we sat on the bed of his truck and chanted. "That's my best friend Peanut" he explained, referring to an overweight min pin, "She doesn't tell where I've been or what I've done". Steve talked about his giant patch of artichokes and adventures collecting pinenuts. He pulled an old boot of the cab, and dumped out a big pile of pinenuts for us. He even gave us his old Leatherman pliers to crack them open. Steve left us with a couple more cans of Coors, saying, "it'll keep me out of trouble."

Craig becomes a celebrity

We were packing our bags and prepping our feet for our evening hike when another car pulled up. A tall man with a big camera approached us. He was a Norwegian living in LA, out for the day working on a photography book. He's trying to capture life on the San Andreas Fault, using photographs to explore why people settle there with the certainty that someday soon, an earthquake will rip the earth in two. He had never heard of the PCT. "Can I take your photographs?" He asked. "Sure," we said and awkwardly posed trying to channel American Gothic and not giggle. He got really excited when he noticed that Craig's feet were wrapped in duct tape and took 50+ photos of them, laying on the ground for a more artistic angle. "Hiker foot fetish pornography," we joked later.

We took off into the silver sun, following it westward as it waned golden the sunk beneath the hills.  We passed a wolf rescue. The wolves ran towards us in a pack, howling. An emu farm. A barn with huge pink letters spelling, "KEEP OUT". A Buddhist retreat. The sun was gone. We kept walking until we reached the highway. Craig's feet were in pain. A lot of pain. We hiked a half mile at a time, stopping for five minute breaks until the pain would subside enough to continue walking. We finally arrived at the hostel, Hikertown, after midnight. Dogs barked and the manager came to let us in.