Idyllwild

Idyllwild.  It's all in the name.  Ridiculously cute outdoorsy town at the base of the San Jacinto mountains.  Bakeries, stores to buy leather tasseled clothing items, and hiker-friendly eating establishments abound.  Taking a "zero day" here, which means hiking zero trail miles.  Body is grateful for this rest.  

Everyone here is used to bedraggled hikers and does their best to help.  The Idyllwild Inn, where I am staying, gave me a whole cabin with a deck, livingroom, kitchen for pennies (relatively).  A woman at a gift shop where I may or may not have been Mother's Day shopping helped me figure out which kind of semiprecious gemstone bracelet would heal and soothe my doesn't-like-to-be-dirty skin.  The lady at the pharmacy even smiled when I bought a tube of the product "Boudreaux's Butt Paste."  I hastened to assure her it was for the chafing of my pack shoulder straps...she just kept smiling, nodded sympathetically, and rang me up.

On another note...I logged in to Facebook here, at the Idyllwild Library, and was startled/amazed/elated/confused to see pictures of my former boss, Ambassador Ford, and some other friends entering "Free Syria," a portion of Syria at the Turkish border that is controlled by the rebels.  So many feelings about this.  Are we doing enough?  What more can I do?  What does it mean that I spent a year working in Iraq, only tangentially on these issues, when this crisis was ongoing?  What does it mean to be going to Tel Aviv, and what more should I be doing?

Lots to think about as I head into this next portion of the trail. 

One last note - since the beginning of this hike, my goal has been to reach Kennedy Meadows, 700.2 miles up the trail at the base of the Sierras.  That would be continuous 20-mile days, and I realize now this is a little too much for me.  So my goal is now to hike through June 8, wherever that takes me.  If it's short of that goal, oh well.  It will at least have been about all the steps of the journey and not just the last one.

There are lots of pictures of the same ridge of Mt. San Jacinto and the range...they are all beautiful so I will include them all.  Hard to take a bad picture up here.

Dina, trailnamed Trail Mix (for her love of good music) and Cleopatra (obvious reasons) holding court with the boys in our cabin at the Idyllwild Inn.

Conquering the wild in style

Atop Mt. San Jacinto

This looks idyllic, but it was actually the windiest campsite ever.  Tribu and I  tent-coveted Matan's Big Agnes as only stubborn Hexamites with tents that blow down in the wind can...and granted, the fact that our tents acted like kites could have been "user error."  Still, I heart Big Agnes.