Another beautiful day. We were up and moving early, still glad to have these now verdant hilltops to ourselves. The desert lies below to the east and west in colorful canyon displayed intermittently between tall Jeffrey Pines and Black Oaks.
This is the first week that we have chosen to skip cooking hot breakfasts and frankly I think it's great. Oatmeal is just starting to get to me. Makes me a little nauseous to think about. Then again, it is one of the healthiest meals we eat everyday.
It's 6:35 pm now. We have decided to stop at a campground with a running spring in order to have water for dinner and allow for filling our various vessels and containers (I have quite the collection of ex-Coca-Colas, Powerades, and Gatorades going in my pack). We ran across a note tacked up on a pine as we approached this last forest road indicating that two caches, which the water report from the Saufleys had noted as up and running, fully stocked, were not to be counted on. Thus, this will be our last water source for about 28 miles. We'll load up and chug a few pints as we break camp and attempt, tomorrow, to put in the 28 to get us there by nightfall. Not that it will be a disaster if we fall short, it's just much more comfortable to have water to spare when making camp.
The scenery today was nothing breathtaking, but it was, nonetheless, nothing short of gorgeous. We unexpectedly found ourselves in this great, tall pine forest, crossing soft trail tread over glades of wild flowers.
We chatted about college memories and enjoyed a lengthy recollection of both of my siblings' weddings. We speak often of all our tentative plans for after this hike -- it brings us to a point of minor dilemma as we expect to come out west again to live but don't want to put so much distance between us and our families. We figured if we could convince Greg and Varuni, Sarah and Nouru, Pete, our mothers even, to all move out to, say, Seattle, with us the problem would be essentially solved. Then we throw around the idea of living in NYC, which is something we are intereted in doing, but it just seems like it would be so damn hard, so unpleasant and difficult to get settled . . . thankfully it is just a bunch of ideas right now. Walking is the business at hand.
We noticed when we arrived at the spring here this evening that there were a few trucks parked acros the way, down under some tall pines. We checked my watch and found that it was Friday, and figuring they were weekend campers up from the lowlands we walked over to say hello. The root of our intentions were not so pure, however. I was too tired to be bothered with the stove. Eliza was too hungry to not have me cook. Who knew, maybe these nice, friendly campers would invite us over for dinner. It seems that we had sunk down into a shameful state of backcountry manipulation, begging for a juicy hamburger, salivating over another's well-stocked cooler of cold beer.
It turned out to be a flop. There were two parties, both sets of dirt bike enthusiasts, neither all that concerned about our well-being. We approached under the feigned auspices of asking what they knew about bears in the area. The first group of about four guys, bearded, gruff, enjoying a big bottle of Jack Daniels, were setting camp between their villainous looking mud choppers and their huge pickups as we approached and responded to our plaintive concern with a laughing, scornful, mocking dismissal. "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" one of them called out, and they had a group guffaw at our expense, as we schlepped our aching bodies past. The next group was much nicer, even invited us over to sit by their fire -- they were intrigued by our endeavor, but didn't care so much that they felt the need to shower us with food and drink, as so many others have before them now...
It seems that our unbelievable trail magic spree came to an abrupt halt and we were left alone in the woods tonight, gnawing on beef jerky and scarfing down ramen and mashed potato burritos.
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