We slept through yet another early morning of pounding rain today, the tent walls slapping cold and slick against our sleeping bag. By 5:30 things had cleared up and we were going through our finger numbing morning routine of packing everything up as best we can. Eliza was feeling particularly wiped out and miserable. We were both sore from the long day in the rain yesterday. At 25 miles it is our longest to date. The clouds were rolling swiftly overhead, grey and looming, the sun still not up over the knob in whose shadow we had camped. We needed a break.
We agreed before setting out that we would get off the trail and follow guidebook directions to the Hikers' Oasis, a small trail angel operation where we were guaranteed at the very least a working restroom, laundry facilities, and internet access. If we had only known how great these folks really are, we wouldn't have ever hesitated.
After a grueling, awful 6 miles along dirt (and some paved--much worse to walk on) roads we found the Oasis, a 2.5 acre lot alongside the Kamp Anza Rv park, serenely littered with old trucks, sheds, fenced in plots of lawn, a big washroom building, flowerbeds, birdfeeders, light posts, and other sun-baked clutter. No tents were there to catch our eyes, as we thought there may have been. In fact not much of anything was going on. We wouldn't have ever guessed that this were the place had we not seen the little sign at the entrance to the drive. As we made a second loop around the inner drive, a guy who appeared to be doing work on a truck trailer nearby hollered over a shrubline to us, "good luck!" He evidently figured that we had already sipped the sweet waters of the mysterious oasis and were on our way into the snow capped peaks to the north. We yelled back that we were still searching for our hosts and he walked over and accompaned us to the back door of an inconspi!
cuous looking mobile home.
Here we met Bear and Ziggy, trail angels and proprietors of the Hikers' Oasis. They are an old couple who met out of coincidence here in Anza some 8 years ago and because they had a couple of nice experiences with PCT hikers and were both blessed with an unbounded sense of generocity and kindness started the Oasis to help aspiring hikers get from Mexico to Canada.
Bear is a riot, a grandfatherly smart ass who figures at this point that if you can't take time to relax and share a laugh in this life, "you may as well dig yourself a big hole, find a nice rock and throw yourself right down inside to die right now."
Ziggy tells him to mind his manners and reminds him of all the chores he had meant to accomplish today before he started jabbering. As Bear tells it, "She does the cooking and taking care of things. I take care of the other things." They both look to be in their late 60s or early 70s.
Right away they took all of our laundry, gave us clean clothes out of big bins of things they must have gotten as donations or picked up at a thrift store. Bear showed us the bathrooms and shower and gave us towels and told us to come on up to the house after we were cleaned up and had our tent set up in the picnic area across the way. We happily obliged. Today was day 9 without a shower and climbing into that steamy spray felt real good.
The day since has been super relaxing. We signed into their log books and filled out the hiker forms that they keep on everyone who comes through. They talked and talked while we sat sort of stunned, cheeks all puffed up and red from the hot shower--a cumulative effect from the 8 days of straight, direct exposure to the sun and mother nature's other grand universal powers: the wind, the earth, the water.
So these folks just run this place non-stop every spring for hikers that pass through. They do laundry, give rides to town and back to the trailheads (we discovered after the fact that we could have saved ourselves the shin splintering road walk if we had only called ahead or just stopped in to get a drink at a house along the way which had advertised out front that they had water for pct hikers), they even serve 2 meals a day! All this and they wno't take a dime for thanks. It's not too often that you find such kindness in strangers in this paranoid world of ours.
Eliza and I are the only hikers here today, so we are being doted on a bit. Bear took us into Anza, which is just a couple of shops, a gas station and a bank and bought us ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen. Ziggy is making a special vegetarian pizza for us (I know, I thought the Koala had gone carni myself).
What else could a couple of hikers ask for?
It's gorgeous out now and we are lying out on the lawn next to our tent. Eliza is reading up on the next section of the trail. It looks like Fuller Ridge, the range of high peaks in the San Jacintos which we will hit after leaving Idyllwild are still completely frozen over with feet of ice, so we'll have to find an alternative way around that part for sure. It's a bad year to be a purist on the pct, it seems.
that's all for now
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