May 21

Start: deep creek hot springs
End: horse camp at silverwood lake
Daily: 21.4
Total: 329.3

Today was a hard day for everyone apparently.

It started out nice though. We woke up early and spent two hours in the hot springs. Hotrod tried hard to unmotivate Bubbles, Boots, and 8-Mile, to no avail. They left a a full two hours before us. When we left, though, it was already getting hot and we were drained from the hot springs, so the miles took forever.

We were in the closed section of trail, though, so we kept looking for the reason for the closure. Eventually we hit two washouts that took us approximately 30 seconds to cross, each. There was a path through the washout already, and although the hill was steep, it wasn't scary. I don't know how they expect us to go through the Sierras if they don't think we can handle that.

Eventually, after crossing two dams, we got to a third dam around mile 17, and who alwas there but Bubbles and Boots and 8-Mile. They were planning on doing 5 more miles.. So we did too. It took us until 10:45 to get down to the Silverwood Recreation area's campground. We were lost for a while, and a cop or ranger or something eventually told us through the megaphone on his car "the PCT goes down this road, there's water on the left and a campground on the right." it was like a voice from nowhere since we couldn't see the guy's face.

Then as we were trying to find a place to set up camp, we stumbled on a bachelorette party tha had rented out the group sight. A couple of girls we talked to were really helpyl, but the guys in the background were drunk and unhelpful. We asked if there was a place to camp and they said, "nope, but we're having a great time!"

Eventually, we found a spot full of Double Rainbows and Big Agnes tents, so we laid out our cowboy camping stuff and fell asleep. I was too tired to journal so this is written at sweet, sweet McDonald's the next day.