Day 34: mile 430.4 to Hiker Heaven
5.19.18. 24 miles.
I keep saying this, but today was officially my longest trail day! We got started about 30 min later than we planned, but made up time pretty quick as most of the morning was downhill, with a few super steep uphill surprises.
We made our way about 6 miles to our first stop at the North Fork Ranger Station where there was water for us to refill and they had snacks & soda for sale, which we obviously took advantage of.
We didn’t stop too much on the way down the mountain because we were so ready for trail magic at the KOA! When we finally reached the road we practically sprinted there. It was super confusing getting in to the KOA - we were disoriented and not sure where to go, but LOL’s friend found us and brought us to a picnic table and fed us wonderful food! Donuts and soda and ranch, plus baby wipes and M & M’s! She was also super fun to talk with and had such a cute pup! Thanks Severia for the awesome magic! Lots of our friends were also there including Excel, Dead Zone, Kool Aid, Reverse Pigeon, Flip Flop, Vesuvius, Josh (Dainty Hulk Smash) and more. They all got sucked into the KOA vortex though and were going to stay there for the night even though they only hiked 8 miles that day.
LOL and I didn’t want to spend money to stay there and we had our minds set on getting to Agua Dulce & Hiker Heaven, so we pushed on.
also saw the PCT completion monument which was very unassuming
We only had 10 miles to go, but they didn’t come easy! There was a couple of climbs that were killing me at the end of the day. The coolest part of the afternoon was going through Vasquez Rocks around sunset time. They have filmed sci-fi movies here like Star Trek because the rocks are pretty outer-spacey. I wish we had more time to explore, but we had to get to Hiker Heaven before 9 pm! Unfortunately, we got lost in the rocks (going uphill) and had to backtrack, which wasted a good amount of time. There were so many unmarked random use trails in the area.
We ran into Chef at one of the junctions and hiked with him to Agua Dulce. We thought we were home free, but we were given wrong information about a hiker heaven shuttle, and were over an hour too late to get a ride to Hiker Heaven. But LOL dusted off the hitching thumb and got us a hitch almost immediately! Thank goodness too bc Hiker Heaven was over a mile off “trail” aka the main road thru Agua Dulce.
Once we got there, at almost 9 pm, we got a quick tour from Numbers, one of the volunteers, of Hiker Heaven and the low-down. He was super nice & found us some space in these big orb-tent things to sleep. Once the “tour” was over, I was starving and my feet hurt so bad, so I quickly set my things up and Chef ordered us all pizza delivery! We got a huge Mediterranean pizza with mozzarella sticks and coke! It was awesome. After that I fell right asleep. I was so tired!