Day 25 – Hawaiian Shirt Wednesday
Originally published on Mason Hikes the PCT 2017.
Mileage: 24 trail miles + 2 to Casa de Luna
The desert is hot. It always has been, but for some reason that hasn’t sunk in for me yet and I decided that breakfast in town until 9 AM was a good idea. It WAS a good idea and I got a delicious breakfast with some people, but that meant that I got to start hiking when it had already hit 90°.
We had a nice climb out of town during which I ran into a bunch of other people I knew, and we got to talking about where we were camping tonight. Everyone told me I absolutely needed to go to Casa de Luna, a trail angel’s house in Green Valley that is also known The Lunatic Lounge. There’s no way I was going to miss something called The Lunatic Lounge and I figured 24 miles was enough for a day, so I decided to stop by.
Getting there was miserably hot. No breeze, no water, and the thermometer on my pack was reading 105°. I passed some people I know who were literally hiding in the bushes from the sun because it was so hot. To be fair, one of them is named Shade Baby, so it seems to suit her personality. It was just way too hot to be climbing mountains.
I was pretty over my 9-hour sweat fest by the time I got down to the highway, so I tried to walk to Casa de Luna as quickly as possible. Luckily, this meant that I made it in time for a couple servings of delicious taco salad and a few games of corn hole before it got dark. Everyone, upon arrival to The Lunatic Lounge, is invited to select a loaner Hawaiian shirt for the day, so almost everyone was celebrating Hawaiian Shirt Wednesday. It’s very similar to Hawaiian Shirt Friday which I organize at work, only it’s a different day of the week and the people smell MUCH worse.
Once it got dark, we discussed some pretty outlandish health theories and debated the validity of a few conspiracy theories in the blue-lit lounge. Among these theories were that lard literally slices open your arteries, that I’m poisoning myself by eating gluten, that aliens/the government are kidnapping hikers from national forests, that the vibrations from humming/speaking stimulate neuron growth which causes introverts to be dumb, and that the US government created a super-deadly hybrid rattlesnake to use in Africa but PETA forced them to release it in the US instead. Unclear which of these were true, but they were certainly entertaining to talk about.
Eventually we all headed out into their enormous backyard to camp, where I decided to cowboy camp for the first time. Hopefully the critters don’t get me!