May 20-23, 2016

May 20

The time had finally come to say goodbye to Eeyore. After a nice Persian breakfast we hugged it out on the street before parting ways. It would be strange continuing on without him but I was excited for him to be pursuing his passion. Hopefully he would be able to come out and meet us for a few sections.

I got on the bus heading back into downtown to meet my cousin Andy's wife, Julie. I hadn't seen Andy since I was 5 and that was well before he and Julie had met. After connecting via email only a few days previously, they graciously offered to host me for the weekend until Rickets and Loopy returned.

Getting off the bus I spotted Julie immediately. She had very sparkly glasses on and was waving from her car parked right next to the stop. I got a driving tour of the downtown area of LA and an excellent Thai lunch. After a few errands we headed back to the house to meet up with Andy before heading to dinner at their friend's restaurant.

May 21

I slept in quite a bit and had a light breakfast before continuing the tour of LA on the way back into downtown. We had lunch at Canter's Deli before spending the afternoon at the Peterson Automotive Museum. Naps were had before dinner at Saladang Song, a Thai place. Jackie, a friend from school who had visited us in Wrightwood, met us last minute for drinks after dinner.

May 22

Unused to the late night I slept in even more. We had a lazy morning followed by a trip to the Huntington Gardens. They have quite an impressive collection. Particularly interesting was the desert garden which held all sorts of cacti that we had not seen in our travels.

With Rickets and Abby arriving the next day it was time to figure out our plan for where to get back on trail. Compiling snow reports from online resources as well as our friends ahead of us we decided that getting on at Ashland, OR and heading south was the best option. It looked like we would be snow-free for the first week or two and by the time we hit snow we hoped it would have melted down some.

May 23

Julie's house had no power in the morning due to scheduled maintenance so we headed over to the house of a friend of hers to hang out until it was restored. We got there just in time for lunch, which we had at Caltech's dining hall, before heading back to Julie's to meet Rickets and Loopy.

They arrived mid afternoon and we spent another few hours pouring over snow maps again making sure that we were getting on at the right location and traveling in the correct direction based on conditions. Once southbound from Ashland had been decided on we hit the road headed to San Jose to stay with Ricket's girlfriend and family.