Daily mileage: 15.5
Mile 551-566.4
Why are you so out of order???? Darn you blogger.
I feel like I overuse the words amazing and great but there is something about being out here that is joyous and fantastic and so hard to capture. When I hiked with Bobcat I think she expressed it best. A few times each day she would stop and shout "I'm on the PCT". Something about yelling this is just perfect and I think we are all just extremely grateful and happy to be out here. Our group has a running joke that today is the "best day ever" because it really just seems to keep happening. There are hard moments and sections but overwhelmingly this trip is such a winner. Okay enough gushing, on to the day.
Today was a town day, only 7 miles to the road and we would be golden. Started going down through another old burn area (it seems like half this trip has been a burn so far). The wind started picking up and we popped into another wind farm. Walking through the turbines on the edge of the cliff as we stared at the road way down below. Oh and the breeze at the wind farm the day before was nothing compared to this. This was real wind, requiring laughing and yelling and walking completely sideways just not to fall down. The whole left side of my body got ridiculously cold while my right felt perfect. Very tiring but oddly fun.
This town day was odd in that we could go either to Mojave or Tehachapi, this is the first time we have had two choices like that. We picked Mojave because we had heard it was less spread out than Tehachapi but didn't really care which town since they both had supermarkets. Good thing we didn't care because the hitch we got was heading to Tehachapi. Got into town, snacked and checked out the supermarkets. Ended up wasting a ton of time buying food for our resupply and then going to all you can eat Chinese. Still not sure if that was a good idea but it was pretty hilarious.
Sitting on a lovely grassy patch we spread out all of our junk and tried to put together 6 odd days (140 miles) of food together.
Resupplying is always stressful for me, I hate guessing how hungry I will be days in advance. We made a big salad and then off to search for a ride. Nice local in a pickup turned around and drive us back to the trailhead out of his way, funny guy, very entertaining ride. Back on the trail the wind was blowing and the trail was doing silly s curves when you could see twenty feet ahead where you needed to go. The trail kept disappearing and after our salad break and a quick look at maps we cut across a field and took the road the rest of the way (the road mirrored the trail).
Word of advice, when hopping fences, make sure you let go of the fence.
Oh and the road walk was great, pretty farmland, windbreaks, and lots of cycle tour talk. The day got even better when we saw Tanya and Neil where the trail met up with the road and the best cache ever. We had actually met Rita at the grocery store in Tehachapi. Her son hiked last year and she was asking us about where to leave trail magic and telling us about freshly baked cookies do we were so amazed to actually find it. It was all fresh and perfectly ripe fruit and some cookies and hard boiled eggs. So good.
We walked a mile or so farther, over some train tracks, over a highway (glad we went out at willow springs, highway 58 could have been really tough) and then camped on the trail right next to the road in a wind break. Lulled to sleep by the freeway and trains, gotta say best day ever.
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