Where I camped last night
Sweet river view!
Breakfast time! Keglegs and one of the twins (I’m going with Paul), getting some couch shade, and Julian busy with some Tapatio. The other twin (I’m going with Daniel), chilling in the van, and Josh near the front making sure the van won’t blow up (daily).
Funny and random thing. During our breakfast hangout, the whole shaded area created by the van started to get swarmed with all these red ants! Julian got bit through his shirt and it wouldn’t let go! They were pretty ruthless and aggressive, we figured their hill was somewhere since there were hundreds of them!
Just after 9:30am, someone spotted a strange jet-like object in the sky, but with two contrails! Julian suggested that it might be the new space plane that my cousin Ryan’s company was working on. And it turns out it was! This is a huge “double-plane” that holds a space-rocket in the middle, and flys as the rocket shoots into space! Then, the plane can land and be reused, instead of the rocket shedding its thrusters and wasting all that time and $$ to build them.
The test rocket blasting straight up from the planes!
Wow, what a cool thing to witness. I’m glad we weren’t very far from Mojave/Tehachapi, and got to see the launch and test pretty close up!
It was almost 10am, when the post office was set to open, so we packed up and left our shade-losing, and-swarming breakfast area and headed into town (5 mins away). We hit the grocery store for some fresh food and resupply, and then they dropped me off at the post office, went to go do another errand (the dispensary), and came back to scoop me after I was done!
At the post office, I received my package from Claire which had my long sleeve set of clothes that I swapped out for my shorts and tee. The super hot section is over (for now), and with cooler weather and mosquitos in the Sierra also comes the new set of clothes! She also sent more dread shampoo and contacts, mosquito repellant, and some other essentials. You’re the best babe!
Sarah bought me new long underwear since I lost mine. They had been delivered yesterday on the holiday when the PO was closed, so they got returned to sender. Sarah called them and now has them headed to Lone Pine so I’ll have them for the high elevation and early morning mountain passes! Thanks Sarah!!
When o got scooped back up, it was about noon. We filled up on gas, I bought a salad to nom for lunch, and then it was time to go swimming! We went back to the BLM land and scoped out a sweet lunch/swim spot. I swear, we did some CRAZY off roading in the ‘86 4-cylinder, hope-machine! (With 6 of us weighing it down!) I was impressed and also surprised we never got stuck! We had a few close calls! Josh is so awesome and funny and it was so fun to ramble around on those roads.
You can see Josh in the water, Daniel on the edge, and Keglegs hiding in the shade
Who’s that!?
It must be..
ME!
I found a sweet path that went a couple hundred yards upstream
Julian took these photos of me floating down
The water was FREEZING!! But felt soooongood I had to do it twice!
Josh in the tide pool
Shotgunning a Tecate! (In like 1.2 seconds)
It was so much fun swimming in the river, I don’t even think I got sunburnt! We were all getting super hungry so we soon headed back into town, (to Taco Bell of course!!) We re-charged our phones, and ate some more. I was connected to the WiFi there but for some reason it wouldn’t let me upload any of my blog!! Super frustrated I finally gave up and just uploaded them all with my cellular data. I’m trying to not do that too often. I did 4 this time, I don’t think it drained too much data. I figured I won’t be posting for another ~5 days until Lone Pine, and I should be able to get WiFi at the hostel there!
Josh, Dan, and Paul
My new hiking clothes!
We had initially planned to start hiking again in the afternoon today, so we could get a few miles up the trail and not take a full zero in Lake Isabella. Since Josh and friends drive all the way from LA, Julian wanted to spend another night with them which was totally understandable. I still wanted to head out and take the next section pretty slow, so I opted to start hitching from the town center. Keglegs was feeling the same plan so we headed out together for the hitch back!
The three of us were super lucky on the hitch in, but the hitch out took just under two hours! The boys dropped us near the freeway entrance. In about 10 mins we got a hitch from this nice young woman in a sweet Tacoma. She was headed North of Lake Isabella to Kernville, but said she’d take the longer way around out east to get us at least partially out there on our 38 mile hitch attempt. She was having a really bad day, (had actually quit her job that day as a whitewater rafting guide), but she was still pretty positive and so nice! We made it about 10 miles out before her junction to Kernville.
We got dropped by all these cows!!
The second wait for a hitch was closer to 20 mins. But some guy pulled up and said he could take us as far as Onyx. He was a little sketch but not enough to not take him up on the offer. He did at one point add “but I’ve also been drinking..” to the end of one of his sentences..
At Onyx the hitch was super tough! Not a lot of people were going east, (about a car every two minutes), and the sun was really coming down directly in our faces. Luckily, I had Claire’s awesome hitchhiking sign to give me shade AND help with the hitch. And it DID! A van flew by and then came back a couple minutes later. The lady told us she’s NEVER picked up hitchhikers, but she was on her way to pick up her friend off the PCT, and because she saw the big letters “PCT HIKER to TRAIL”, she felt like she should turn around and scoop us. Yay Claire for the sign!! :)
She dropped us off at Walker Pass before going to the campground to meet her friend. It was already after 6pm! Keglegs said she was going to go slow up the big hill, so we split off and I flew up the thing. It was so beautiful, (and shaded from the sun)!
Climbing above the hwy
Big fluffy clouds!
Out of the desert..
And into the trees!!
I stopped at a sweet site just over two miles up at around 7pm. I normally don’t hike later than ~6:30, and want to get a nice early start tomorrow. Keglegs came up a little while after and decided to camp
I’m the same ridge at another small campsite a few hundred yards down. As I was brushing my teeth I took a little walk Northbound on trail to get this sweet sunset view!
It was so beautiful!!
The picture does not do it justice at all! I have to admit, the last few days before Lake Isabella, there’ve been so many hikers, and so little water, that it seemed like everyone would camp at one of the few water sources every night. Like EVERYONE! It felt nice to have a little solitude up the hill today and enjoy this beautiful sunset and really just take it all in. No talking, no nothing, just appreciating the beauty of the desert, but also becoming SO excited for what’s next in the Sierra!!
Wow, this post got real lengthy, today was FUN! I’m glad I got a couple miles out of Lake Isabella and chipped away at this big climb in the cool. I’m sure Julian will catch up by end of day tomorrow, (he’s so fast!), but this “old timer” here can’t do those back to back 25+ days like Julian and Keglegs want to do, and I’m sure I’ll catch up with the “youngins” at Kennedy Meadows, and we’ll group up for the Sierra!!
Thanks for reading!!
No comments:
Post a Comment