PCT 26 – Into Mojave

Daily Miles: 10
Total Miles: 558

The wind never seemed to die down last night. It was blowing so hard, it would lift our sleeping quilts up at times and blow sand on our faces at other times. SweetPea hardly slept at all. Definitely not a great night.

We got up at 4:15 and were on the trail by 4:45. It was a bit tricky packing up, because we had to hold our stuff down before it made it in our packs…we were worried that the wind was going to blow some of our stuff away.

We started with the final mile of uphill which went quickly in the cool and windy morning. We came upon some trail magic while it was still dark out. We both grabbed an apple for a snack later in the morning.

After a few hours, we started to see some hikers up and passing us on the trail. We don’t really hike fast at all…we usually go at SweetPea’s pave which is slow and steady. We are able to keep up with other hikers because we are willing to hike more hours in the day. In the end it all balances out.

SweetPea wasn’t feeling very good most of the morning, probably because she is pretty exhausted with four bad nights of sleep. We had planned to hike 18 miles today to get to the highway which would go into Mojave. However, after 10 miles, we came across our favorite trail angel, Coppertone. This is the third time we have come across him and we happy to sit down for a bit and have a root beer float. He was parked at a road crossing that many (probably most) of hikers take into Mojave. Since SweetPea wasn’t feeling good, we were tired and it was already really hot at 9:30am we decided to head out to the road and hitch into town.

Luck was on our side and we got a lift quite quickly with a really nice guy. He brought us right to the Motel 6, where we checked in, got cleaned up and rested a bit. We have decided to take tomorrow off and rest up before we head back into the desert. We’re not really looking forward to this next four day section, because it is going to around 100 degrees and this will be the driest section of the trail, with a possibly 42 mile dry stretch. Yuck.