Day 18 - Saturday, May 15

"Stealth" tenting on a dirt road (mile 328.1).   Walked 20.2 miles today.

Got almost no sleep last night at the hot springs as people were loud and partying very late into the night.  Got up and going about 6:45 with Snowflake, Flying, and Dirty Knuckles in tow.

We continued our hike through Deep Creek Canyon and after about 5 miles, we exited the canyon and arrived at a dam and a small water crossing.

Made the crossing and rested on the other side where we were joined by Bright Side and briefly by Lefty, both who we had met yesterday (in all their glory) at the hot spring.  Walked on and quickly ran into Boomerang, a retired doctor who is supporting his wife's thru hike from a camper van.  He offered us sodas, cookies and apple pie.  Super nice guy and I hope we run into him again.  He also warned us against sharing food as Norovirus is apparently running rampant near Walker Pass (about 300 miles ahead of where we are).  Still a good reminder though.

Hiked on while chatting with Bright Side and Dirty Knuckles and after 6 or so miles, got to our next water source where we rested and restocked on water.  The next few miles were following the contour of several mountains.  Dirty Knuckles and I walked together for a bit, talking about our respective travels in both the US and the world.  She had traveled to VA last year and so we talked about where she had been and the hikes she had done.

After a while, we walked apart and I took this opportunity to call home and check in (turns out other hikers in our group did the same thing).  Hung out at the next water source for a bit.  This is where we had planned to stop for the night, but the lack of good sites and a rumor of being able to order pizza from the Silverwood Picnic Area convinced us to push on another 4 miles.  We walked hard and crested the top of a hill to see a beautiful lake in front of us.

We took a couple of breaks by the lake.  It was too pretty not to.

At one of these breaks, Dirty Knuckles decided to slide down the metal storm drain chute.  Again, I have a video but can't post it here, so here she is climbing up it.

She sustained only a minor scrape which is good considering what might have happened.  We got to the picnic area and ordered pizza.  Several others joined us in joking around and laughing way too hard at completely stupid things.  It was utterly ridiculous, but a ton of fun.  Got our pizza and ate as much as we could then packed out the rest.  I ate half of a large pizza as well as a small salad.

Photo: Dirty Knuckles and Snowflake getting ready to dig in.

As we were all too tired to hike really far and supposedly the park rangers will come kick you out of the picnic area if you try to sleep there, we hiked about 0.1 miles up the "trail" (dirt road) from the PCT to the picnic area, and found a flat area where we could fit all of our tents.  I don't think we're supposed to camp here either so we're "stealth" camping (which usually involves camping sneakily in some brush or just out of sight.  We made no effort to really be stealthy tonight.  Just hoping nobody drives the road.  Don't think they will because there's a locked gate at the bottom.  Could get some rain tonight, so the rain flys are up.