Day 49- June 7th

Oh man sleeping in (7:30am) in a cool, dark room in a nice comfy bed is the most amazing thing I've ever experienced! Hahaha. We ate some mango I bought last night at the store, fresh fruit is a must when you're in town!

We packed all of our things up and shortly after checkout at 11am we headed downstairs to return the keys. Apparently the DVD's that we had "borrowed" we're 5 dollars to rent, which we were unaware of. We didn't even get to watch any of them because we were up so late walking/shopping and we were so tired last night! 

So that kind of sucked, but I paid $5 and we were on our way. I figure that we receive so much kindness and free food and things that we don't feel we deserve from trail Angels and other hikers, that every once in a while we need to have some unfair things happen, haha.

We walked out to the post office, this time with our packs on! Just another .7 hot windy miles away. But we weren't too bummed because we were sending a bunch of stuff ahead in the trail and some stuff back home.

I'm sending my old socks, my long sleeve shirt, my pants back home. Claire sent her umbrella (she can't hold them AND the trekking poles), some old clothes, and a few other items home. We're sending our stove, food requiring cooking, rain jacket, warm layers, gloves and beanies ahead to Kennedy Meadows. 

We will be there in probably 9 days, and I have checked the weather forecasts and elevation for the stretch, it seems like we will never be over under 60 degrees at night, and there is not going to be any precipitation. Even if there is by a freak chance, we still have our rain fly and tent and most of our other clothes. 

The man at the post office was very nice and it only cost us about $20 each to send the boxes! It was still so early and hot in the day we decided to go to a cafe for some coffee and ice cream and wait out more heat. Remember, because we're hiking we're allowed to eat whatever whenever :)

Leaving the cafe, someone pulled right over in a few seconds of us having our thumbs out, thank goodness! (As our next stop was over a mile away) He dropped us off at the shopping center where we had shipped last night, and I was able to find a dual wall port that I needed at RadioShack. 

We bought a few more water bottles from the store since we'll soon be tackling a 42 mile waterless stretch :/ Our final stop for the day was at an awesome place called Primo Burgers. Because guess what? Yup. We were hungry again. For the 4th time by 2:30pm, haha. 

We ate and ate and ate! I don't think we'll eat all our food that we packed because we've built up a reserve! When we finally rolled out of the place, we found to our dismay that the highway out of Mojave and back to our trailhead was closed :(

Claire and I walked to a nearby convenient store to regroup, and I discovered that we could hitch east for a few miles on highway 14, just to hitch west back on 58, making a big triangle to the trailhead, if that makes sense.

We were surprised that we actually scored a ride pretty much immediately! A fellow hiker named Siri from Norway picked us up. He had just gotten off of the trail a little ways past Tehachapi and has rented a car to do some trail-angeling. He was on his way to the Stater Bros. market to pick up more supplies when he saw us.

He explained to us that the first few weeks of the trail had excited him so much, and that every day had made him so happy to get going and to be hiking the trail. However, this week had been so harsh and hot and un-fun that it made him lose the passion he once had. He was taking a small break from the trail while deciding to continue or not.

I'm hoping that the short conversation we had while riding in his car reminded him of how awesome the trail supposedly becomes after this last crappy 150 miles. He took I sight out to the trailhead on highway 58, where we had been dropped off yesterday morning, and we were on our way!

The trail started by paralleling the highway for a couple miles, in a not so glamorous dirt walk.. There were a bunch of construction vehicles and the path was unclear. There was also a bee-keeping area with at least 50 bee houses, 30 feet away from the trail!

Luckily they didn't bug us much since they were probably taking shelter from all the wind. Speaking of wind, just after the bees, we started to ascend waaaaaay up, where the wind became violent.

Look closely and see 100's of turbines! Maybe because we're hiking through the windiest place in the world?! 

This was the strongest wind we've walked in so far. I thought that maybe the wind would not be as intense up the mountainside as it was down in the valley in the highway area. Boy was I wrong..

At one point, a strong gust literally pushed me off the path and my feet slid down the loose scree while my hands jabbed into the gravel to catch my fall. Just a few scrapes but no blood. If it would've happened on a number of any other parts of the trail with a steep drop off, it would've been a looooong way down for me.

Minutes later, on a steep drop off area, another strong gust of wind knocked Claire's hat straight off her head and it landed about 15 ft up the steep grade to our left. I carefully scrambled up the mountainside to retrieve it and was successful. However, on the way back down the huge rocks that I stood on started sliding. I somehow surfed down on them to the path; at the time I thought I might've slipped something in my side the way I had to contort my body to stay standing. When I hit the trail Claire had to grab me by the arm so I didn't keep going down the cliff! Thanks baby! 

But wait there's more for exciting heroic action! Less than 2 minutes later, Claire saw something on the trail and exclaimed! I was steps behind and hurriedly caught up to see what it was.

There was a big, weird, translucent, scorpion-spider-hybrid looking insect attacking one of those super cute big fuzzy black caterpillar. It was stabbing it with his claws or fangs or whatever they were. Normally I let nature work itself out but I had to step in and save the fuzzy! I took one of Claire's trekking poles and "stopped" the Scorpion King. The caterpillar scurried off and safely away! It felt really good to step in and be a caterpillar hero.

Today my mom told me to look for little blessings during this next hard stretch. To look forward and seek out the beautiful and unusual to help ward off the negative thoughts and feelings. This was totally one of those things! If we hadn't been there at that specific time who knows what would've happened to the caterpillar! Thanks mom for the pep talk :)

Another thing of Beaty amongst the crazy, windy ascent this afternoon: the sunset. Although to windy to gaze at for too long, Claire and I both captured some awesome vistas and clouds and were amazed at the dessert beauty:

We found a nice little campsite in the trees shortly after sunset. Even in the shelter of a few trees, it was a challenge setting up the tent in the wind. However, I DID capture this picture of Claire literally holding down the fort.

The wind has somehow picked up even more since then, it now sounds like heavy, relentless, waves crashing onto a beach feet from our tent.

Well, today we did 6.47 miles, all uphill. In just 5 of those miles we climbed over 2,400 feet! All in the wind! Although it wasn't the best, we're still alive, and feeling pretty good from all the R&R we've had in Mojave. This might be the last post for a while, as I doubt I'll have service for a while!

-Thanks for reading!