Day 26 (30 May)

Miles 0 (Zero-Day). Wrightwood.

We sleep in today until approx 8 am,which is fairly late in regards to our new hiking life.
The first thing the four of us do today is finish Maya’s birthday cake in bed. What a breakfast of champions (ok, the lambrusco is missing :P)
After that we decide to have a real breakfast and go to the local bakery to eat the famous breakfast burritos. The burritos they make are huge and so delicious.
As in every town we need to do our resupply. To do that we hit the local grocery store, where we meet several other hikers in front of the store, hanging around in the shade and charging their electronic devices.
By now we kind of have it figured out what we like to eat on trail and what we don’t like. So one would think we should be very fast in doing our resupply. But no, it still takes us up to one hour to get everything! Somehow I still don’t get the American “system” of where to find which kind of food in whatever isle. And also the gigantic amount of choice and variety of products is not really helpful.
But somehow we manage to get everything we need (and some things we will definitely not need like a big watermelon), leave the store and buy some toe socks and stuff sacks in the nearby outfittery.
Now it is time to do the remaining laundry. What sounded like a perfect offer for the room we got (free laundry) turned out the be a) a selfservice and b) the smallest washing machine I have ever encountered in my life. The size of the machine is that tiny, that one could only do like 4 pieces of clothing per load. In addition to that, one washing load of 6 minutes is never ever enough to get the filthy hiker clothes clean again - in average it takes me 5 times for one load to get clean again… and now repeat that like 5 times! The whole washing procedure results in 4 tedious hours in the rather small backyard next to my beloved washing machine.
At some point Speedy shows up to say goodbye since he is leaving to hit the trail again and agrees to wait for us in Hiker Heaven to see each other again in a couple of days.
In the evening Maya, Wizard and I go get some pasta for take away, as well as wine and beer. We meet Melanie, the German girl, again who has also made it to town. She joins us while we wait for our orders to be ready and decides to hike out with us the next day. The three of us then go home and end up watching Jurassic Park during dinner. And a truly easy day off trail (except the laundry part) comes to an end.