May 24 - Wrightwood

Start: Guffy campground
End: err um like 373?
Daily: about 8
Total: 373 ish

We think we missed Jackson Flat Campground which is why I'm a little confused. I guess we were moving faster than we thought. Oh well. We weren't the only ones.

So Wrightwood is an AWESOME trail town. We didn't know much about it so we were only planning on neroing. When we hiked from the campground to Hwy 2, which is where we were hoping to catch a ride, there was absolutely no traffic for a good 10 minutes, and then only traffic headed in the opposite direction. We thought about walking but it would be a 6 mile roadwalk. So we waited a little longer and a guy drove up with his two toddlers in the car, told us he had room for one, and then said the only traffic coming by was locals going to walk their dog because the highway was closed three miles up. Crap.

Here's where it gets good. Then he said, don't worry, people from town know you're here, they'll be heading up to offer hikers rides in a little while.

Not five minutes later a guy drives up, gets out of his car in a green Marmot DriClime Windshirt (this automatically makes him hiker trash), and says he has room for four. We let The Germans and Rockfish go first because they got to the pass before us, then another car with two hikers we know named Eggman and Mouse Strap (a mouse chewed through his shoulder strap) and a lady named Carol. Carol, an 84 year old woman, takes us back to her house, lets us do laundry and take a shower, apologizes for having no food (previous hikers ate the soup she'd made) and then refused any money we offered her. She had been a political science professor at CalTech (?) and said she missed being around young people. We helped her set up her composter and move her furniture so she could set up a pen for her dog.

Then she took us to a restaurant called the Evergreen, where we enjoyed a delicious (and cheap) brunch before  meeting up with Bubbles, Boots (now Megaphone - he has the loudest voice ever), and 8-mile. We went shopping (during which we were stopped by three people asking us if we needed any help, a ride, a place to stay, anything) then got free coffee at the coffee shop (for thru hikers only). Next, we attended a pizza party for Gourmet, held in the Baha'i meeting space behind the pizza parlor.

Finally, we were dropped off at the trailhead by another hiker who was given the keys to a section hiker's car and told to use it, then let the section hiker know where he parked it and hid the keys.

Seriously. I feel damn spoiled. It's all just a recipe for paying it forward. Chris just said it felt like in the movie Hot Fuzz where the town is trying to win Village of the Year. "The Greater Good."