Day 50- June 8th

The winds sure didn't let up last night! They only grew stronger. I didn't sleep much, which is not like me at all. Every few minutes the sound would be so loud and disruptive it would wake me back up. Because of this, when our 5:45am alarm went off, we both went right back to sleep. 

I'm actually quite thankful we slept in! The miles uphill in the wind last night were tough on our bodies and we needed the rest for sure. The day was not as unbearably hot as the last few had been, and by 9:30 when we finally left, it still wasn't too bad.

It was a relief to actually get into some larger trees that weren't shrubs and dried up cacti! A little green makes such a difference when hiking all day! There was also spotted shade all day today which made nice for breaks (instead of 20 people huddling under a bridge).

The trail soon met up with a mountain road and went down into a valley. After a few hours we took a break on the side of the road. We still had service and I was reading a comment that my mom had left on my blog. In it she said something like, "It takes rain to make a rainbow."

As I was reading the motivational comment out loud to Claire, she exclaimed, "Look a rainbow!" Sure enough, there was a full on rainbow in the middle of the morning and there had been no rain! What a crazy thing to happen as I was reading that sentence! 

Mom, I guess it DOESN'T need to have rained to make a rainbow? 

A little while later, we heard a crazy earth shaking explosion far off in the distance. What the heck?! Just after we heard two more in a row. And other hikers confirmed it to be so. Maybe some bomb testing or something? Super eerie...

All day the cicadas were buzzing and making so much noise! At one point I went over to a tree to rest under it's shade. I put my arm up on one of its branches and I recoiled in disgust! There were hundreds of cicada carcasses on the tree. They all had huge holes in them so I figured they had all shed their exoskeletons and flew away in their new winged bodies.

We were later talking to a hiker that told us that cicadas live for 5-7 years underground as weird little bug things, then they crawl out and onto the trees, pop out of their shells and fly around for one or two days mating. After reproducing, they just die. Whoa. What a life huh?

About 10 miles into the day, we came across Golden Oaks Spring, which is a natural water source piped down over a large trough by PVC pipe. The water was barely a trickle at 5 minutes per liter, but it was nice and cold. 

Many hikers were taking refuge from the heat, and some were trying to get some sleep after night hiking. We ran into HR (formerly Patrick), and Lt. Dan (formerly Daniel) they had left a day or two after us from Casa de Luna, but had caught up because they did not stay a night in Mojave or Tehachapi.

We rested for a bit and ate a late lunch, before filtering 4 liters of water each and heading on our way! The next water source is over 18 miles away.

We eventually came into an old burn area below some windmills, and saw an old friend! Mr. Poodle Dog Bush! This one was flowering beautifully! Unfortunately still a bad time if touched, not matter how pretty :p

We also saw some wacky things like one wind turbine facing the wrong way.

 

Also one of those weird orange plastic balls that are connected onto power lines must've almost fallen on a hiker, because we saw:

We stopped at a camping spot amidst the burn at 6:30pm. A little earlier than usual, but since the weather isn't as hot as it was, we're trying to get back into a wake-up-early kind of schedule so we can hike long in the morning, take a midday break, and then hike until sundown and repeat.

Some Tim Burton trees at camp:

We'll hopefully be asleep by sunset tonight; we still did 15.25 miles today! Not too bad for not much sleep, a late start, an hour break, and an early end! We plan on pulling out some serious miles in the next couple days if the heat continues to be merciful!

-Thanks for reading!