Day 22 (26 May)

Miles 293.24 to 314.5. From Bushcamp to Bushcamp.

We wake up and it is freezing cold. Brad is, as usual, still asleep and snoring peacefully.
So we leave this beautiful place and say goodbye to the nice creek.
After a while of hiking we pass our first bridge across a river and decide to have breakfast. Shortly after we stop we hear a voice saying “Hallo zusammen”. It turns out it is Melanie, the lovely German girl we last saw in Lake Morena on the second day. She then had some issues with her feet and stayed there for the day. We knew that she had then hitched from Mount Laguna to Warner Springs and was therefore always a few days ahead of us. So now we had caught up with her again! She tells us that she had started a trail family and is now hiking with two more senior hikers.
We continue our breakfast and Melanie continues hiking.
Today we will reach a highlight of the PCT we have been looking forward to since the beginning. The Deep Creek Hot Springs.
After hiking another 4 hours along the Deep Creek river the river widens into sort of a pond. From far we already hear the voices and laughter of dozens of people. It turns out there are actually a lot of people enjoying the Hot Springs at this time because it is the Memorial day weekend. Some of them are skinny dipping, the place is known for that as it is a little bit of a hippie place.
As soon as we arrive we put all our stuff out on the sand and jump into the coldish river pond. We swim for a while and look for the Hot springs but the water is still cold. We find out that the Hot Springs are located next to the pond and look like small jacuzzis.
We jump in one of those and it is just amazing! Perfect treat for our overabused feet!
And shortly we meet Melanie and her trail family again and spend some amazing 3 or 4 hours there.
We continue our hike which leads us along the Deep Creek canyon. At the end of the canyon there is a huge dam which we have to cross. This is it with mountains for the moment.
We now reach a big desert looking valley.
After we walk a few more miles and cross a small creek we set camp on a very nice hill with a stunning view across the valley and call it a day. 21 miles hiked today - a new record!