Day 32! 23.61 miles!!

So, last night, a hungry bear strolled into camp looking for some food. There was a family group consisting of a father, uncle, and a son who had left their food bags on a picnic table. Devoured. All of it. There was a girl about 100 yards from us that was cowboy camping, and the bear came over to her and was sniffing her. She woke up and screamed. It went away but came back either once or twice to looo for more food. Craziest part?! I slept through ALL of this.. haha. At one point around 2:15am I had woken up to see a bunch of headlamps and hear voices talking, but I just assumed some people were up late or night hiking, and went back to bed. It wasn’t until the morning that I heard what had happened! Crazy!!

Well, the morning was, for lack of other descriptive words.. BEAUTIFUL. It was another morning of most that soon got burst through from the sunshine!

For the most part today the trail was a nice, gradual, downhill. Pretty soon I hit the 500 mile mark!

Crushin’!

I leapfrogged with Julian today, seeing each other at the water sources and sometimes hiking together for a few miles. It feels good to be hiking solo but also having a pretty constant hiking buddy. We’re good friends now! We’re hoping that we’ll be entering the Sierra together, as it’s always best to hike with a buddy in the snow.

The miles flew by with the fast, gradual downgrade. Soon the trail hit a dirt road and we walked straight into Hiker Town! Hiker Town is a small collection of buildings and shade/water, where hikers can hang out and charge their phones to wait out the heat, or spend a night for some $ if needed. They have a shuttle to the local convenience store every hour on the hour and we had arrived at 2:55pm! Perfect timing to load up into the free shuttle and go grab some food at the store!

Hikertown

I bought a little more food at the store to last me until Tehachapi, and while I was there I ordered a burger, fries, mozzarella sticks, and a chocolate milkshake from the kitchen. We soon caught the shuttle back to Hiker Town, and there I saw a familiar face. Twerk!

Twerk

I had met Twerk in Portland while I was working at the Tin Shed. I was serving tables, and I heard him talking about the trail with the person he was eating with. I went over and told him I started on the 20th. He was starting in the 15th! I follow him on Instagram so I knew he’s been ahead of me this whole time, but I’m surprised I already caught up!

Julian and I started to head out for a couple more miles although we had already done 20 to get to Hikertown! As we were about to leave, another hiker set down a styrofoam cooler with beer in it and said they’re up for grabs! We each snagged a cold one and headed out into the heat again! 

The LA aqueduct 

Last mile beer :)

The wind was picking up quite a bit, and we didn’t want to hike too much longer. We saw a nice grove of Joshua trees about a hundred yards off trail. We were able to find just enough flat space for both Julian and I to get our tents set up behind the protection of the string stubby trees. The sunset views were magnificent.

Tomorrow we’re planning on hiking 13 miles to the Cottonwood Creek Bridge before the day gets too hot. The bridge is the only shade for 24 miles between Hikertown and Tylerhouse Canyon. Last time Claire and I night hiked this super hot section, but this time the weather is much more mild, in the 80’s vs the 100’s. We’d like wake up at 4am and start hiking before 5am. We’ll see!!

Thanks for reading!!