Well I didn’t make my entry yesterday but it was Friday May 10th and damn it was a good day. We ah, walked a couple miles from Vasquez Park into Agua Dulce. And ah, nothin was open. So we sat around, waited till 7 o’clock till the store opened.

Pete: Wait. Stand around with kids waiting for the school bus.

Yep. And ah, general store opened, a little bit after 7 I think. (belch) And ah, they thought probably that even though our packages had been addressed to the Century 21 across the street that they might’ve got em. So we looked through all the packages and saw some people we knew, Walkin’ Jim an, an Bob, and Glen, and some other folks had packages there. But ours weren’t there, and we had no letters there either. So ah, Century 21 didn’t look like they were going to open any time soon so we… but they had some nice benches in the shade, so we hung out on the benches, opened packs up and started speading our gear around. Got some goodies to hold us over till breakfast, from the general store. And ah, see 8 o’clock rolled around, and we finished off our goodies and we’re waitin for… used the bathrooms in the store and… waiting for 9 o’clock to roll around and kinda scoped out a pizza place, mail box, another little store, pretty much got the layout of Agua Dulce down. Agua Dulsee, I guess they call it Agua Dulsee there. And ah, oh, nine o’clock rolled around and we finally learned that the restaurant doesn’t serve breakfast except on weekends. So we, run around the little store again, get some more junk food… chocolate milk, pies, donuts, ah Kern’s, I got a orange, some macaroni salad, and we eat all that stuff for breakfast. And hang around waiting for the pizza place to open for lunch and waiting for our package. Well, the Century 21 lady actually showed up shortly after 9 I think (Pete: yeah). And then, she was just good to us all day long. She… it’s hard to describe how nice she was.

Pete: A bucket of water for you to soak your feet in…

Yup, she brought out a bucket of warm water so I could soak my feet. And ah, it was not only warm water but I could smell that it had some kind of like baths salts in it too. It was, it was just ecstatic, I mean, we camped out in front of that Century 21, started off getting 5 packages, and ah, sorted through all that good stuff, it was… I got some nice crazy stuff from my uncle Dewey like little fishing lures and fishing line, ’cause I think he thinks we’re on the coast, instead of the crest. But ah, I left that stuff for anybody else who wants to use it. And ah, but he gave us also some dried cherries and some travel quotations which I have along. And ah, let’s see, from my mom we got a loaf of… another loaf of some kind of bread that I haven’t tried yet, but it looks like maybe chocolately cake kind of bread or something like that. And ah, the usual good stuff from mom. And we got our mail-ahead package to ourself where I figured out how to use the sewing awl and sewed up the waist strap on my pack which is holding good. And ah, generally just did our, did our stuff, hung around in front of the Century 21, made phone calls. And I called up ah, Camella. And she was really the only person I got ahold of from Agua Dulce, except for I got ahold of ah, Cassy Carter, who’s gonna maybe meet us the following day from LA, and go to ah, since we were a day ealy, called to tell her we wouldn’t be there. She was a little disappointed, but its the first time I had talked to her in person, cause I met her on the internet, so that was kinda entertaining.

And ah, let’s see, I guess before we went to lunch then, Camella told me that she had sent us a package and we hadn’t gotten that. I guess I really hadn’t gotten my mom’s package at that point either.

Pete: We had gotten Siri’s package.

She had all sorts of good candies, and a loaf of cinnamon-raisin walnut bread. And all kinds of good stuff. So ah, the post lady came, and low and behold, two packages for me from mom and Camella, and that pretty much just filled out my larder. I was, I was carrying pound-packin bagels, a ton of fruit newton, oh I’m packin cream cheese, packin’ chocolate bread. Just, just the best, I mean, we have dubbed this section ‘The four days of feasting.’ And ah, we’re gonna eat well. We’ve already… ah I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s see (laugh).

And ah, that was all we got in the mail. We went to the pizza place for lunch, and had a large 16-inch jalapeno pineapple pizza. And ah, it was indeed very big. And two green salads and a pitcher of root beer. And ah, polished most of it off, saved ourselves each two pieces for dinner. Later on down the trail. And ah, talked the girl there a little bit. And ah, seemed to like to talk more than she liked to work.

Pete: Her name was Amber.

Let’s see, then we went to grocery store and did our shopping. Which we really didn’t need to do much, since we got so much good stuff in the mail, but we added some peanut butter and some crackers, some apples, and some hard candy to the, to the larder. And ah, and we both got ice cream. I got a huge old fat vanilla ice cream chocolate chip cookie sandwich. And Pete got a pint of ben and jerry’s cookie dough ice cream. And we just proceeded to plop that stuff down on top of the pizza. And enjoyed doing so. Pete made some more phone calls and I cleaned out the filters, and we got kind of arranged our water plans. We ah, I kept having to call Valerie at the PCTA because our guide book for this section of the trail is not really up to date, so we were kind in a mystery about where the next water was, and I just wanted to make sure I knew that we were somewhere in the right vicinity. And ah, I had 8 1/2 miles to next water, I wanted to make sure I could count on that. And the answer was maybe. (laugh) And ah, so we just got all that stuff taken care of, it was getting late in the afternoon by now, about 4 pm by the time we got all that ice cream eaten. And ah, the ladies in the Century 21 just continued to be super helpful, giving us their cold water from the dispenser, letting us do dishes in their sink, letting us use their phones to make local calls, and all that kind of stuff. They were just right there willing to help us. So we got it all done, got packed up, finally had… packs were heavy cause of all this food, but we were stoked about it, cause we were looking forward to finally having a stint of trail where we eat well. And ah, we headed off on up the hill. And ah, the trail pretty much goes straight through Agua Dulce, and follows the highway, or the main road through town out to a little highway and then kinda busts off up through into the hills from there. And ah, we were planning to walk the first 8 1/2 miles and find the water. Well it soon became clear when we got to the right area that the trail that was supposed to go to the spring was not there, and it was getting dark by that time, since we’d waited so long. And ah, we wandered about the trail for awhile, couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it, finally just decided to eat our dinner under the stars. Which was the remainder of the pizza. And ah go to bed. So we did that, it was nice, we were… we were right under the flight path of some kind of major airport though, and airplanes would low-flying with their landing lights on now and then. But I really didn’t notice that after I fell asleep. It was just a nice peaceful night other than that. Kinda we slept in a nice high grassy meadow.