May 1. Day 13.

Campground to food to campground to food etc.

Miles hiked: maybe 0.5.

Idyllwild. What's the catch?

This town is ridiculously pleasant. It seems too good to be true. Set in a little valley at about 6000 feet, with 8000 foot granite peaks rising above, it is a classic little California mountain town. The main business district is about 3 by 3 blocks, so even broken down hikers can easily hobble to everything they need. There's a state park campground where hikers can stay for $3, and many of the food places have hiker discounts. Seems too good to be true. As it got dark yesterday I sort of expected all the townspeople to turn into some sort of vamp-zombie mob bent on gobbling up anyone seen wearing dirty earth-tone nylon.

That didn't happen.

I spent the day pretty casually, mainly trying to walk as little as possible to rest my Achilles and everything else. I got some coffee, killed about an hour looking at Facebook for the first time of the trip, got some tomatoes, a cucumber, an orange, and some yogurt and had a fresh food party for one back at camp. Then fell asleep. Then I spent about 2 hours at the library figuring out my phone/photo issue (turns out it was a different problem all together than what I'd previously thought), had a giant milkshake, hung out at the outdoor store a while helping another hiker I'd walked with a week or so ago figure it how to lighten her pack, had a beer and watched town go by, had an avocado, ran into You Again and Angie and had dinner with them. And now I'm going to sleep at the crack of 9 pm.

Pretty damn good for a zero day.

Quiet morning in a quiet town.

The Achilles has been really good all day long, and I'm pretty confident that if I ease in to the miles over the next couple days things should go OK. It's been cool to spend almost 2 full days in town, watching the flux of hikers in and out. I've caught back up with some people I started with on day 1, but also some people who were just starting when I was at kickoff are starting to catch up to me. People seem a bit worn around the edges from he storm followed by the hot weather and weird fire closure detour, but everyone whose made it here seems really happy to be on my the trail, and the collective spirit within my section of the "herd" remains high.

Birds:

Nuthin new, few Stellar's Jays and Acorn Woodpeckers around town. Anna's Hummingbirds sipping from the manzanita flowers over my campsite. Brewers Blackbirds in town too.