Monday April 13th

Hola,

So i woke up around 6:10ish. I slept in fits off and on all night.

Actually my tent was really nice and held up well. And it went up so easy and quickly!!!

I was up and hiking by about 7:10. The day started out pretty nice and easy, then it started to climb a bit. At first it was just pretty gradual ups and downs, very nice.

Interesting flower plant things out here lol

Beautiful views

 

But again i just wasn’t loving being alone.

It is amazing how quickly your emotions go up and down out here.

 

You have to stop and take rests in order to be able to complete the amount of miles and not wear your body out too much.

After my little semi-sad sit down i passed a little section of pretty yellow flowers. The smallest little thing can perk you up.

 

After this the trail meandered up and down the higher parts of the mountain at a pretty reasonable pace and slope. It was nice and i enjoyed the hiking.

But then we went down, down, down. It was crazy hard, it was pretty steep, killed my feet because it was also rocky and really killed my spirit because it got hotter as you went down and it just never seemed to end.

What popped into my head was a clip from Gilmore Girls when Jess moves to tiny Stars Hollow and he looks outside and a little song plays “this is hell, this is hell, isn’t it swell” or something to that effect so i started singing that to myself the whole way down lol. It is amazing the single line or two of a song that pops into your head and you just sing it over and over and over because you don’t have the energy or capacity to think of anymore of the song or a new song lol.

Or course when i got to the bottom of the insane down, i turned the corner and oh look there it goes up, just as steep in about a quarter of the time. It was horrible!!!!!! It was a badly done dirt road with giant pot holes and dry water streams that went like straight up. I had to stop 3-4 times just to catch my breath and dry heave.

The trail stayed pretty steady and hugged the mountains but there was no shade. The trail is the line along the mountain.

So the two hikers passed me by and we talked for a few minutes.

So i got myself to stay in the shade until about 1:45ish. Then got up and got going. Oh my goodness was it hot and dry. It was two more miles to the water tank and i fought for every step of them. It was rocky and dry and just unpleasant. About 3/4 of a mile from the water tank my hydration bladder was finally empty, i still had just over a liter of water in my water bottles but i finally drank my bladder dry. In the distance i could see the dirt road that the water tank was at so i hightailed the last 3/4th of a mile.

When i got to the water tank there were about a half dozen people there hanging out in the shade, because miraculously there was shade! I put my liter of water and 1/2 liter or powered into my hydration bladder then filtered two liters of water. I sat for about 2 hours in the glorious shade and drank one of the liters of wonderfully cold water (it was an underground tank) then filtered one more liter before i left.

While sitting in the shade i talked to a a guy attempting to go to Canada who had come from Alaska! I mean no one is really used to hiking in the desert heat but man was it a super shock for this guy lol.

After i had been at the tank about 10 minutes a girl named Danielle showed up. She had passed by my tent the night before and said hi. She is also solo hiking so we got to talking and decided to hitch into Julian together the next day.

We rested then headed out to do about 4 more miles so we would only have to do 5 miles in the morning.

We left the tank just after 5pm and rocketed out…..and i mean rocketed, she was like speedy gonzolas, there were times i felt like i was running after her.

We thought it would be relatively steady and not much climbing….but nope!!!! We had to climb up another mountain, and friends, i don’t mean hills i mean MOUNTAINS like going up 1000+feet. It sucked. We got up and over the mountain and around 7-7:30pm found a reasonable campsite. We set up quickly and i got to use the lamp my wonderful friend Sharon bought me.

That is the lamp hanging from the ceiling of my tent. It worked wonderfully!!!

In total i did 14 miles today.

I was passed out by about 8:30ish and again slept fitfully. Apparently that is normal for the trail.

Tomorrow Julian!!!!