Well the Festival of Calories has been going strong all day long. It been a pretty indulgent day I can safely say. I’ve pretty much been stuffed since we got to town. I feel stuffed right now. But ah, we picked, we’ve ah, we came into town and we both huevos rancheros and another basket of chips at the mexican place for breakfast. And that was enough to really fill us up pretty good. And ah, we each ate a donut afterwards, though. And we made phone calls and hung around till about noon when we finally decided it was lunchtime. We went to BJ’s sandwich shop, and ah, ordered up a couple of gardenburgers. And they just gave us these HUGE monster sandwiches, just packed, with mayo and avacado, lettuce tomatos onions, all the fixins. And ah, bottomless cups of root beer. And we wrestled those as best we could for a while but neither of us could finish. And we were both just absolutely packed when we walked out of that place. And ah, we managed to kind of roly poly down to the park where we’ve been lounging about like Yogi Bear for a couple of hours. We went ahead and picked up our package and sorted out our, brought it here and sorted out our food. And ah, it’s just been a real enjoyable day. We’ve been lounging around in the park for the most part. We’re pretty full, I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to put away a whole nother meal, we’ll see. But we’re gonna get away our mail, send our mail, which will include this cassette, so this is probably Big Bear, last entry on this ah, this cassette. And ah, then tomorrow in the morning we’ll set off and do some more walking. Start heading off on our stint toward Agua Dulce, laden with food once again. And bearing heavy packs. So ah, that’s it, that’s about all the news for now.

Um, if you make it all the way to the end of this tape Camella, I loved your, I love talking to you, and I just love you in general. Hope I’m with you for the rest of my life. Bye bye.

=——————-=

K, first entry on this tape is the night of ah, May Day, May 1st, Wednesday. The ending of the day of the Festival of Calories, which we are still, with the moon high in the sky, the full moon, we are still working on, by eating munches and bunches of chocolate, triple chocolate cookies. (mouth full) We ate a lot of food today. And I don’t know if I even want to attempt to go through it here, ’cause other stuff happened. (giggle)

Maybe I will, maybe I’ll try to recount it all. Um, I recounted some of it actually on the last tape, but I’ll redo it. We started off with uh, huevos rancheros and another basket of nachos. (more laughing)

Pete: Four times we ate at restaurants today they were closed.

True. The only open restaurant was lunch. But we entered La Casita’s before they opened, but they served us anyway, and gave Pete a hot chocolate and me a tomato juice. And both really nice piling high plates of ah, huevos ranchos, or hot, hashbrowns, and tortillas, three tortillas with butter. And Pete’s hot chocoloate came with like a, huge enormous mound of whipped cream. (laugh) I don’t know if we need to go into this much detail on all of them.

Pete: We need to, keep going.

Ok. Um ah, we proceeded through that meal successfully (cackling). And ah, we were both very full, but not anywhere close to puking, so we left the restaurant (unable to speak laughing) pretty content, and ah, Pete proceeded to make a phone call while I proceeded to the market to buy postcards and to buy both of us a huge cinnamon roll.

Pete: Which was more like a glazed donut.

Glazed cinnamon roll, maybe four or five inches in diameter. And I brought it over to Pete while he was on the phone and he ate it, and I ate mine. And ah, we proceeded with postcards and phone calls for a really long time.

Pete: Well, while you were on the phone I went to the market and got my first of two Cherry Garcia ice cream bars.

That’s right, and I didn’t have one at that time.

Pete: Right, you had one later.

Ok, so then we finally get to the side, we’re pretty much through digesting breakfast and we wanna go to lunch. We ah, hit the sandwich shop, BJ’s, across the way, where we start off with root beer and onion rings with ranch sauce. Bottomless cups of root beer. Which we drank a whole pitcher of once she refilled them once.

Both: And ah.

Pete: Oh, I was gonna say, yeah, and then half way through the quarter pound garden burgers with side salads was when we reached the almost puking stage. (cackle)

Yeah we both had gardenburgers with big french rolls, and Pete had an onion roll, and provologne cheese, and side salads. Macaroni salad and potato salad. And ah, we both got about a little over halfway through (cackling) we started giving our plates long, woeful stares. And ah, could go on no longer. Had our sandwiches wrapped up, finished off our pitcher of root beer, and headed off for the park to roll around in gluttony for a couple hours. Where we watched a couple of kids get kicked out of the park for smoking weed. And ah, by the park maintenance guy, who rambled on about it in full drug vocabulary for about an hour.

Ah, and ah, we rolled around, brought the packages there, split em up, rolled around some more. Ate some stuff from the packages.

Pete: I didn’t eat much.

Not really much, just bites here and there. I had a ginger candy, and we had some of our triple chocolate cookies.

Pete: I think that’s when we went back for the, more ice cream bars. The peace pops.

Yup. And more phone calls.

Pete: And then we really wanted something else to eat.

That was after we had finished sorting all our food, though.

Pete: Right. We were hungry again. Or we thought we could stuff more down our gullets. And ah, and we’d met the two hikers.

Uh-huh. We met ah, two more hikers, named John and Chris. And they’re currently camped nearby.

Pete: They told us that the woman at the pizza restaurant was in there, and that even though the sign said closed, she’d make a pizza.

Yup. Gave us that helpful clue.

Pete: We decided to sit on the bench, with our packs, outside the pizza restaurant, inconspicously, remember. And you saw the door was open, so you just walked right in.

(laugh) Nah, I saw the door was open and I looked in the door. And ah, at first I didn’t see anybody. But I didn’t give up hope, I looked again. And the second time a lady popped up from behind the counter. And I kind of waved and smiled at her and she waved for me to come inside. So I just went ahead and went inside, I had the backpack on with all the new food at that time, and ah, just started up a conversation with this lady who was really friendly.

Pete: Yup.

And ah,

(loud fart, followed by laughing)

And ah, Pete, Pete walked in (more laughing) and she offered to make us a pizza. And ah, that was (one more fit)

Pete: exactly what we were looking for.

Yup, we nosed our way right into that one. So she made us, we, first we decided on a small, but then we decided we might want to take some with us to camp, so we decided on a medium. But then she went to get the crust from the oven, or from the freezer, and she didn’t have a medium. So she said she’d just give us a large at no extra charge. And ah, we both, Pete got a snapple and I got another bottomless cup of root beer.

Pete: oh, god.

And she baked our pizza and we, we just proceeded to like, she had a pacific crest trail register with lots of comments in it from previous people this year and previous years about how good the pizza was. And ah, I signed that and Pete and I sat down to a game of checkers, which he eventually whipped my butt at. But not till after our large pizza came, with mushrooms and olives. And we ate a little over half of it, which was pretty good I thought. And ah, played checkers.

Pete: Almost puked again.

Yup, got very full once more. And ah, and finally managed to roll out of there with still three pieces of pizza left. So that was pretty close to the end of our day of gorgin. Pete wandered across the street and made some more phone calls. And then we were walking on our way back up here, to do the about 4 1/2 mile walk back up to camp in the canyon. A little bit too late, we were gonna have to walk in the dark some. And ah, we walked about a mile, mile and a half of it, when we got passed by a Volkswagen van, full of—the guy from BJ’s driving

Pete: who served us our onion rings.

Right. And ah, and Chris and John, who we had just met, and gave us the tip off to the pizza. Who, as a matter of fact, were getting another pizza from a guy that wandered into the shop while we were there.

Pete: Ordering pizza while she was closed.

Right.

Pete: And was demanding about it, somewhat.

He just walked in and got his pizza and brought it to those guys who he was showing his home movies.

Pete: It was anchovies and pepperonis by the way. I saw her make it.

Yup me too. And ah, that was pretty interesting.

Pete: Uh huh. And then, and then pretty much we got really high.

So, well, they stopped in the van and gave us a ride for, not the whole way but like, the hardest part by far, probably 2 1/2 miles up the canyon. And ah, and then he stopped and was ready to turn the van around, and we all got really high together. And we were getting along great, having conversations. And we walked up to the, uh, the end of the camp here. Or the trail where it crossed the road. Uh, probly not more than a mile. And they’re camping not far from us right now. We just proceeded back to our camp and started to fix things, have cool conversations about religion, parents, and ate three more pieces of pizza together, and ah, finished off the bag of triple chocolate cookies. I think now we’re about ready for bed. And ah, we’re gonna hike some with our new friends Chris and John in the morning. So we may have a new phase of trail life here to wander through. Sounds like it’ll be interesting, we’ll have to see.