About wrightwood, the next resupply not much can be said. There is a grocery store and a couple of restaurants, the end.
What is more interesting are the lodging options, which are all exorbitantly expensive. except one, obscure, kind of hard to find spot: the budpharm, a supposed campground a couple miles out of town.
Dave, the owner of the 1 acre big campground came to pick me, Coyote, Leah and Mermaid up. Upon arrival, it became clear that the budpharm was more than just a campground, a semi permanent stop for pct hikers who had left the trail for whatever reason.
There was Smokey, the perpetually high caretaker of the campground who nursed a broken arm, he had been there since March. The others were a motley collection of drunks, people high on mushrooms (such as Sappy, an intense looking fellow who made ‘meow meow’ sounds after most of his sentences and often at random started talking in an unexisting language) and others who generally rejected society.
Every evening, they gathered around an outdoor stove for the next session of music, alcohol and hash. For dinner, they had roasted a giant piece of pork, which together with cheese, sour cream and tortillas made for a great meal. Michael, one of the newcomers, puked and stepped on one of the residing dogs, almost causing a fight with Sappy. As he had been there for 7 months, living in the campground ‘library’ on a mattress, he considered it to be his family home, which Michael was disrespecting. In the end, they carried him away. Michael’s friend, Deep Pockets, a real loud Welsh guy, kept his drunkenness at the proper limit and stayed.
Coyote started jamming with Dirty Water and Lopsided, which was nice to listen to, but at this point I was so tired I couldn’t find the energy to participate. I only stayed awake as I wanted to observe as much as possible of this weird, ragtag community. In the end Sappy started dancing dangerously close to the stove and upon observing the many giant burn blisters on some of the others, I concluded accidents had to be common. At that point, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more and went to sleep.
I don’t know what to think of the budpharm. As Equador, a fellow observed later, such people are often looking for something and think they can find it on the trail, and when it’s not there, they go look for it in a place like the Budpharm instead. In any case, I’m more than glad I got to see it.