We woke up early to beat the heat and hike the short 10 miles to Casa De Luna. It was described to us as less corporate version of Hiker Heaven. The plan was to wait out the heat of the day, but the hiker vortex had other plans.
What is the hiker vortex? It’s a powerful force that makes hikers stay at certain locations and it’s very strong at Casa De Luna. We arrived around 9:30 in the morning and managed to get the last few pancakes they had prepared for breakfast. Then, we napped in the hammocks in the backyard before heading into the one restaurant in the area for a milkshake and a burger.
So far, everything was going as planned and we planned to leave at 5 PM and keep hiking. Then some of our friends showed up. They convinced us to stay until at least dinner, which was 7:30. We also wanted to get our PCT class of 2017 bandanas, which required a little dancing for the trail angel who owns the house. Unfortunately, she was away running errands until about 9:15 and we couldn’t have our dance party without her. We eventually got our bandanas and she gave us a ride back to the trail.
We only hiked two miles in the dark, but we got almost all of the next day’s climbing out of the way. It should be an easy day.
Another interesting thing about Casa de Luna is that everyone paints a rock that gets put in the yard as decoration. It ends up pretty cool. There were some pretty good ones.