Day 26

Day 26
12.9 miles plus 3 miles to hitch (15.9 miles) 

Late start to the day today, but that was okay.
The Malt shop and a pool. That is what kept us going today to push for more miles to get to Lake Arrowhead at a reasonable time. Today was my first day hiking with my new friend Charlotte. It was pretty fun today, hard, but fun. However, lots of chaffing was happening. I applied baby powder probably over 10 times today. 
We made up songs to pass the time, mainly a song from the movie Tangled with our made up lyrics. We rested lots when we could. Luckily even though the day included a lot of miles, it was a pretty easy terrain day. Mainly flat and descending with only a few inclines. 
Had a fun experience with a baby rattlesnake. It was on the trail and I thought it wasn’t a rattle snake so I moved it off the trail with my trekking poles because Charlotte almost stepped on it. But then he curled up and rattled at me and I ran away. 


We arrived to the bridge of deep creek and it was beautiful. Splinter’s cabin is .5 away and the malt shop is another 3 miles until they can pick us up. We rested for a bit at the cabin before we continued on. Which is where I applied even more baby powder. 

The 3 mile walk on the road was so difficult after the long day we had and it was mostly uphill so that burned the calves and legs. The hard pavement is not ideal for my foot either... Pool and Malt shop... we can do this.

When we got to the malt shop it was so so worth it to do the long day there. I got an “Impala” burger and a chocolate malt. It was absolutely delicious. First malt I've ever tried and I was in heaven.

After we ate we asked the workers if they knew of any taxi service to help us get to our air bnb tonight and a local buying a malt said he would drive us there. What a great human and perfect timing.

It was an interesting journey to figure out where we were staying because the place closed at 5pm so we had to call the after hours number to get in the gate and to get our room number etc. As well as once we got there our promised pool ended up not being open past 5pm. So that was a huge let down and we complained to get some of our money back. We wouldn’t have booked this place if we had known so we felt pretty upset over it.
We did feel better after our showers and then watched some tv and heated up our left overs for dinner. 
 
By the end of the day we both agreed that we had only known each other for about 28 hours but we had already been through so much, including a life threatening rattlesnake experience!