Day 10 mile 149 – 159.7, plus 2 miles to the restaurant and 2 miles for water

Elevation: ascent 2,360 ft, descent 664 ft

We woke this morning at 6:45 with one thing on our mind, BREAKFAST. We had 2.8 miles to go and then a one mile walk to get to Paradise Valley Cafe and a hot cooked breakfast. The night before, the talk among all of the hikers was, would it be breakfast or a giant burger. The promise of a nice warm meal is pretty motivating to hikers at this point so everyone was up early and our stomachs were driving us down the trail. We covered that 2.8 miles in an hour and Amy and I gave it a half hearted effort of getting a hitch to the restaurant. I know this goes against everything we all grew up hearing from our parents, but hitch hiking is just part of the experience out here.

As we approached the restaurant there was that tiny worry that they would be closed. Thank goodness they were open otherwise it could have gotten ugly with how much everyone was craving their food. The owner and people that worked there were super friendly and were apologetic that we couldn’t sit inside, but we all knew they had to follow the regulations right now. We had actually set a resupply box here as well. So while we drooled all over the menu the waitress got our food box.

When the food arrived you would have thought someone let lose a pack of hungry hyenas. No sooner then when those to go boxes hit the table were forks in hand and the calorie consumption began. The food couldn’t have tasted any better. I would definitely recommend this place if you are ever in Mountain Center, CA. While we were busy feeding our faces we also got to use some electrical outlets to juice up all of our gadgets. By the time we finished eating and had taken care of some blogging stuff it had been 2 1/2 hours. Guess it was time to head back to the trail

We said goodbye to Disco and Lowlander as they were going to take a zero. We also saw David again and he was having to leave the trail unexpectedly. We finally got back on the PCT by 11:40 and the food coma we were in made it very tough to hike those first 3-4 miles. Today was interesting as the trail bounced between desert scenery and more forested landscapes. We could see San Jacinto off in the distance as we should be hitting that in about 2 days. Today was suppose to be very dry but we still saw streams with a little bit of water. It didn’t look great so we waited to get to the Live Oak Spring.

We got to the trail for the spring at 3:15. Since we had resupplied our packs were heavy today. I had Amy stay with the packs while I descended a mile to a spring. We had opted for this versus the urine colored stream water. The spring was flowing great right into a basin. Now the basin was pretty green and not what I would want to drink, however the water coming from the pipe was super clear and cold. We still will have to filter it though to be safe. Now it was the long climb back up the mile I just came down, thank goodness without a pack. I got back to Amy who was working on some trail art while waiting for me. Now it was time to head to camp a little over a mile away. I was thankful it was only a mile because adding 7 pounds to an already heavy pack was not what I had envisioned for the end of my day. We got to camp at 4:40 and are camping again with the Danger Brothers who we kept leap frogging all day. We have a great campsite in the trees that is well protected. Tomorrow should be some snowy scenery if the trail reports are correct which will be fun to see. I know I will be dreaming of that breakfast tonight 🤣.

Thanks for following along. Brian