Lake Hemet to Idyllwild

I slept soooo much better last night after a shower! Wow. What a difference. Despite the gale force winds that were blowing all night long. We all were up and moving early for the walk up and in to Idyllwild. Since we are doing a reroute, we had to do another 2 miles of road walk and then turned up a closed dirt road. It runs right through the fire closure from 2013 and parts of the road road were wiped out. But I have to say, it was so worth the walk up over the mountain. I know I've said it before, but it was spectacular.

It was a trek up above the clouds.

About 9 miles into Idyllwild, which is a cool, quirky little mountain town . Walked past a restaurant right as we came in to town and someone came out and handed us each a bag of cookies and welcomed us to town. It's a really hiker friendly place.

Wandered around town for awhile waiting to check into our room and ran into Blue Jay! We had all met her on the AT in 2014. Small world.

This is a groovy little totem pole thingy in Idyllwild...

We checked in to our cabin at the Blue bird Cottages 

And basically took it easy this afternoon. Caught up with phone calls and emails and kept our tired feet elevated. 

Dinner tonight at La Casita with Blue Jay, Venture (who we've been hiking with the last few days) and his hiking buddy, Bee, who we've also hiked with, but he had to take a few days off for blister recovery. 

Fun dinner. You can't go wrong with chips, salsa and margaritas!!