First confession: this blog post is not going to be as eloquent as it is in my head while I’m composing it as I walk. In fact, none of them are.

Second: Thru hiking is a hundred times harder, grosser, stranger and more beautiful than I can express in this blog, but I will attempt to give you a few of the highlights of the last few weeks.

It’s been unseasonably cold and windy here in Southern California! We finally left the Best Western at Cajon Pass, but some of our days still looked like this:

Luckily, a lot of the snow had already melted. Other hikers were not as lucky.

when there was a break in the clouds, it was pretty beautiful

You know those mornings when you just don’t want to get up out of bed and go to work? Well, they happen on the trail too. This was one of those days:

not too grumpy to snap a photo though

Many mornings getting out of bed on the trail means  unzipping my damp sleeping bag to the chilly morning, putting on dirty, stinky clothes, hobbling out of my tent on sore feet and looking for a bush adequate enough to use the bathroom behind, which means digging a hole and packing out my TP.

And yet, there are many unexpectedly happy moments too, like finding Mt. Dew and pickles waiting for you before a big climb, left by a trail angel. Or after that big climb, coming down to bags of McDonalds that same trail angel happened to drop off at the right moment you were there. Or, even, scouring bear boxes for food day campers may have left behind, you score some skunky Mexican beer. It’s warm, but you chill it in a snow bank and drink it anyway to celebrate your one month trailiversary.

Then there are the sunsets after perfect days of hiking (except for that treacherous trail you had to take down to the spring after the long perfect day of hiking to filter your water when all you wanted to do was eat dinner and go to bed).    

Then there are places whose strangeness one cannot even attempt to explain without experiencing it. Hiker Town, an on-trail hiker hostel, is one of those places.  (No, we did not spend the night, stopping off for water, shower, and a ride to the store for a lunch was enough for us.) In fact, even after you have experienced it, it’s still hard to explain. We’ve spent the last few days swapping stories with other hikers trying to make sense of it.

Hiker Town

the welcoming committee of Hiker Town

Mojave sunset

After hiker town, you spend the next two days creeping out of the desert floor, following the LA Aquaduct and a dirt road. It’s nice and flat, but the road is hard on the feet, especially with a pack full of water, cause there’s nowhere to get any till you are out. And of course, the heat.

Then we entered the world’s largest (literally) wind farm.

only a small part of this giant wind farm and some hikers we’ve been leap frogging with

just a little branch on the trail

windmilly sunset, looking for a place to camp and not finding it

This was a hodgepodge of a post that I’m not sure coveyed everything I wanted it to. Bottom line is I finally feel like a thru hiker, for better or worse (usually better). We’ve been increasing our mileage, both to get ready for some tougher hiking coming up and to catch people we enjoyed hiking with, but fell behind because of our days recouping from shin splints and blisters. We caught up! In fact, some of them showed up yesterday behind us; the trail is weird like that. We met another hiker today we hadn’t seen in a while who was surprised to see us, because he heard a rumor we went back to Maine!

Our mileage for the last three days has been 23, 23.5, and then a whopping 27, when we got stuck on the wind farm. Last two days we spent hiking through twilight and set up the tent with a headlamp.

We’re taking a zero in Tehachapi now, with lots to do to get ready for the Sierras (including spending time in the hotel’s hot tub). Our next big stop will be Kennedy Meadows in a little under a week, the official end of the desert (thank you God!) and start of the High Sierras. No cell reception, let alone Internet, so it will be a while before you hear from us again, but we should have some great pictures of the mountains and more tales of adventure I’ll attempt to convey.

With love,

Comet/Catie

At PCT mile 566.5