Day 44- June 2nd

Pancakes in the morning! YES Casa de Luna! Terrie and Joe Anderson are so awesome! All you can eat pancakes with peanut butter and boysenberry syrup! Happy Teehee.

We ate our fill, and shortly after started our "chores". We rinsed our dirty socks and things, and even took a cold water shower outside! Outside showers are so refreshing! 

We were planning on resting all day but there were so many people there, and even in the shade it was soooooo hot! After doing all the chores and packing our tent up and getting organized, it was already 3:30pm when we finally sat down with noting to do. 

We relaxed in the shade and sat in some hammocks! I managed to sleep for about an hour.

Oh yeah, and the house has a bunch of aloha shirts, so everyone was wearing them around. It was so cool to see everybody looking so relaxed!

Claire and I packed up all of our things and just before dinner I helped Terri clean out some of the drink coolers that had gotten prettttty dirty. I didn't mind helping out because of the very generous hospitality.

We had taco salad again for dinner, and again I had two heaping plates. By the time we were done eating and talking and catching up with the people that were arriving constantly since night had fallen, it was nearing 9:00pm

As we left the house at 9, there was a truck passing by, and I stuck my thumb out just for fun. The guy picked us up and took us out to the trailhead!! We were riding in the back of his truck along with a giant dresser he had just bought. We barely fit on the sides of the dresser, and it was definitely a scary ride on the highway for 2 miles!

We then started our 20 mile road walk (yippie!) around the last fire closure. We didn't know how far we'd get, and we both only napped for a little over an hour. We ended up walking for 4 1/2 hours straight without any breaks!

We started up the hill on the highway which wasn't too pleasant. However we DID pass the equivalent of the 500 mile mark on our walk!

Sure doesn't seem as epic on a road walk but still, woo-hoo!

(Not a 500 mile sign, but close enough)

Then we walked through the small town of Lake Hughes which wasn't too bad, but for the last 4 miles of tonight's walk we were on a super spooky, very low-traffic canyon road with animals making noises in the bushes every few seconds.

We arrived at a tiny abandoned path/trail off of the road just after 1:30am, and we decided to make our home in a narrow wash there. The last two miles were so rough! There weren't any streetlights, and once we ran out of conversation it became really really spooky!

All we saw for hours..

Setting up the tent was the worst ever! There were hoards of bugs and moths completely swarming our headlamps. We were breathing and eating bugs! It was so bad that I had to open my pack for a second to get my headlamp, and about 5 of them flew in!

We threw the tent up, not bothering with the stakes. There's an audible patter of bugs attacking the tent; throwing themselves at it to try and get at our lights. It's now after 2am! We hiked 11.5 miles on the road in 4.5 hours without stopping.

Thanks for reading!