Day 50, Mile Marker 558-562, Tehachapi

Thursday, June 13, 2013 

Hiking Uphill: 738ft
Hiking Downhill: 316ft
Distance Hiked:  4 miles

Post by Melissa:
Today we would leave Mojave and get back on the trail.  My feet had a solid 3 days of rest and Epsom foot soaks and we needed to continue on.  The first thing we needed to do was organize our stuff and get it into our backpacks.  It's always a process to take all of the items in your resupply boxes, sort it, and pack it away neatly in your pack.

I want to give a shout out to my sister Miranda who is doing an incredible job sending us our supplies.  They have all been on time and have contained everything we asked for.  THANKS SIS!!

 

In the afternoon we made another trip to the store for a few last minute supplies. Below is a funny picture of a street vendor selling some interesting leggings on the side of the road in Mojave. Should I buy a pair to hike in? haha!! The mannequin butts are too funny!

Picture of Yogi's guidebook that gives us pointers on where to send resupply boxes, where to rent cars, where to stay, etc.

I took extra care to bandage up my feet this day.  My 2 big toenails had been damaged by the road walk from Agua Dulce to Hikertown and they were lifting and wiggling around.  I put bandaids on both of my big toes to keep the nail from moving and to protect them.  It was uncomfortable to put my socks and shoes on and walk around but I had to do it.  We needed to keep moving.

After we had everything packed up we checked out of our hotel room and sat in the Days Inn lobby for a few hours getting caught up on our blog.  We wanted to get the blog caught up before hitting the trail again and we made a solid attempt to do so.  It started getting late and we needed to wrap things up and get back on the trail.  We returned the rental car and needed to figure out how to get back to the trailhead.  We were about to start hitch hiking but the gal working the night shift at the Days Inn said her boyfriend could give us a ride and she called him to come get us.  We were super excited to not have to hitch hike!

Our ride came about 15 minutes later and we quickly jumped in the car and off we went.  The ride to the trail was about 12 miles so it didn't take too long to get there.  We thanked our driver, gave him $20 for his time and gas and saddled up to get on the trail.  By this time it was around 6pm.  We had meant to get started sooner but the day got away from us.  We started off on the trail amongst the many windmills and it was incredibly windy...I mean VERY windy to the point it was nearly knocking us over.  Our packs were super heavy as well as we were carrying nearly 8 days of food. 

 

We barely made it about 3 miles when Nick suggested we call it a night and camp under a Juniper tree to block us from most of the wind. It was nearly 7:30pm at this point and the sun was setting so it was nice to set up our stuff and go to bed. My feet were happy too that we only did 3 miles.  They needed to "ease" back into things.  We decided to cowboy camp and skip setting up the tent so we could get a faster start in the morning and get some good miles in.

 

Here is a picture of our camping spot taken the following morning. Lots of cow poopies everywhere...I've given up on being bothered by sleeping on dirt, cowpies, and other not so clean things.  You just have to embrace it :-)