Today was a brisk enjoyable 8 miles before getting to Kennedy Meadows – and an all you can eat pancake breakfast at the General Store. We were greeted with a cheer (as is every arriving hiker) by the large group of hikers already there.

They even made statues of us.

This makes 2 milestones – passing 700 miles, and getting to the end of the Southern California desert section. The latter is the most meaningful to us. Everyone who plans or does the PCT sees Kennedy Meadows as the gateway to the Sierras as well as the end of the usually hot desert section.

In a low snow year we might have started straight into that section. In a normal snow year most people would start around June 15. In this year’s heavy snow we cannot wait around for the snow to melt enough so are skipping north. Hopefully we’ll be back at Kennedy Meadows later.

After breakfast we got a lift down to Ridgecrest where we are staying in a motel and planing our next moves.