Saturday May 24, 20.4mi/32.8km
Ridge on Bald Eagle Peak (269.7/6090ft) to Lake Isabella RV Park (289.5/2560ft) (CA) +0.6mi to RV Park
Fortunately it wasn’t windy last night and my camp spot on the ridge was a quiet evening. In the morning I had a couple hours walk downhill on a nice dirt road to town.
Leaving the Sequoia National Forest.
Looking down into Lake Isabella.
Once I got to a paved road, instead of heading directly to town, the route goes up Hooper Hill.
In addition to the nice views of the valley, there were also strange stone artworks.
There was a nice little herdpath leading down the ridge, and once I got to a different paved road, I cleaned the grass out of my socks and then headed to a hot springs.
Unfortunately, there was a sign in the parking lot, that the area was closed to the public. There was no phone signal in this deep valley to search for the details.
I hung out and had a break at the nearby Hobo Campground, and checked out the Kern River.
I decided to walk the road a little further, and see if there was another access point to the hot springs. There was! I went down an old ancient concrete staircase and a herd path down to the river where the hot springs were.
It’s called Miracle Hot Springs and somebody even spelled it out in neat little stones.
There were a bunch of little pools that appeared to have constructed walls at one point, and it looked like somebody recently removed the walls. I later learned that the Forest service had purposely destroyed the pools in 2022, some locals had rebuilt them the next year, and the USFS destroyed them again in 2024. Such a bizarre decision. They’re nice! I hiked the paved road back the 3 miles I had just come, and then headed into the town of Lake Isabella. Despite being near a lake, the town seemed rather poor and a little outdated, I even saw a Radio shack.
A little further down the main road I stopped for a late lunch at Nelda’s diner. They had 48 flavors of milkshakes on the menu and it was so hard to decide so I got three different ones. Plus a pulled pork sandwich!
They commonly get PCT hikers here and they had this cool little charging station for phones.
I walked out of the north end of town to the lake Isabella RV park.
It was pretty nice with lots of shade trees, good showers, a laundry room, and even a lounge to hang out in the shade and watch TV. There were like a hundred old movies on tape, mostly Disney movies.
I hung out with some other PCT hikers and watched a couple movies, apparently I was the only one who knew that the TV had to be on channel 3 for the VCR to work, haha. Afterward I went to the RV park office and collected my package which Toppy had sent me, an ice ax and micro spikes for the Sierra Mountains section.
Tomorrow I’ll hike the last 14 miles of this “Coast Connect” section to Kernville, and talk to the rangers at the permit office. Due to the snowmelt and high-running rivers, I’ll likely have to skip this section and come back to it later.