Day 5 – 7/3/17
9.6 miles
Junction Meadow to Road’s End

Way back when we picked up our permit, a ranger who overheard some of our itinerary cautioned us that some folks had trouble with crossing Bubbs Creek, but she thought it was better lately.  We didn’t think too much of this, especially since according to our maps, we didn’t need to cross Bubbs Creek. We figured it must’ve just been some tributary which we’d crossed on logs that was the troublesome spot. 

So we cruised downhill all morning, me a little slower due to waking up with a stiff low back and trying to not aggravate it. 

As we reached the bottom of the canyon, we crossed a few footbridges over fingers of Bubbs Creek, and then suddenly there was another finger, but no bridge. We saw a couple of day hikers on the other side. It was only 10am, but the water was too deep and swift to simply walk across. We scouted a bit, but there wasn’t much room to go up or downstream since we were between to fingers of the river. We ended up scrambling over a debris pile, but scooting across a log that had a few inches of water rushing over it, and then sort of leaping into the hip deep water where there was a living tree we could grab onto, steadying us through the next few steps to shallower water, then shore. 
Wait, weren’t we by supposed to have to even cross Bubbs Creek?! Now we were on the wrong side of the Kings River (which Bubbs flowed into just after we crossed it), It was only an extra half mile or so to the trailhead going this way and we sure as heck weren’t going back. 

Once at the trailhead we talked the the ranger at the permit station and got directions to my ranger friend Helen’s place 6 miles down the road in Cedar Grove. A very quick hitch and we were eating hamburgers at the Cedar Grove Lodge. Then we walked most of the way to Helen’s place before she drove by and scooped us up. 

We had a wonderful relaxing afternoon and evening in her air conditioning, swapping stories of trail and the ranger life, and working on a really hard mosaic jigsaw puzzle. And she made us dinner! Thanks Helen!!