April 16, 2007

I spent the night last night at The Bluebird Cottage Inn in Idyllwild, CA. Ed and I were offered a ride from the Paradise Cafe on Highway 74. Suzanne, a P.C.T.A. worker had been doing some trail maintenance with Doris and Don and also stopped at the only restaurant within miles. Lucky us!  We planned to wait out the weather for the night and resume our hike in the morning which never happened.  Instead we stopped at Nomad Adventures to shop for some winter supplies, visited the Post Office to ship supplies forward, then we walked to the Red Kettle for a meal.

As we were eating, the weather pattern hit again so we jointly decided to try again in the morning.  A hiker named John Donovan died on the mountain we're preparing to climb two years ago due to an unexpected storm.  We both wanted to be certain that a huge storm wouldn't hamper our own ascent into elevations nearing 9,000 feet.  I made phone calls home and watched the horrific news story on the massacre at Virginia Tech.  My heart goes out to all of the students, faculty, and their families.