Miles hiked: 24
Mile marker: 541.5
Last night was looking pretty good until the porch light lit up, ruining any hint of sleep I might get. There was another hiker sleeping about 20 feet away from us. Well, sleep is a relative term.
He spent the night farting, coughing up a lung, and blowing his nose. He would calm down for a bit, then it would rev back up. It came in waves. Fortunately, I had ear plugs, so that cut out some of the noise.
I woke up at one point to find that a mosquito net had been placed over the porch light. I don’t know who did it, but I’m glad they did!
Normally at night I wear my wool sleep clothes, but due to a 2:00 AM wake up time, I chose to sleep in clothes that would lead to a quicker pack up time. The downside to that idea is that I was too hot! I don’t know how, but I was.
At 1:00 AM, I awake. Soon I’m tossing and turning, sounding like I’m rolling around on a bed of Rice Krispies treats. It seems that I’m on a slope, sliding off my mat. We are on a porch, so I don’t think that is the case. Maybe it’s just my partially deflated air mattress that is giving me that sensation.
Dad offered Rafiki the shower last night since he helped Richard, the owner of Hiker Town, take out the trash. Richard set out a towel for Rafiki. I know it’s mainly my clothes hanging onto the smelly odor, but maybe I should just hop in the shower since I’m awake!
I spend the next hour contemplating this plan, until I see my phone say 1:57, and decide to turn off my alarm and get moving. It’s comfortably cool this morning. The coolness of stepping into the darkness in the middle of a summer night.
There are a couple of beetles — not cockroaches — crawling on the step next to me. That’s not a cockroach, right?
I do hate roaches.
I flick an earwig off of my mat and get to packing. Soon, the others in my group hear me — I tend to be their alarm — and they, too, begin packing.
In the bathroom, two light brown beetles crawl in the sink. Ew. More roach-like bugs. I turn the water faucet on and watch as the bugs struggle in the whirlpool of water in the clogged sink.
It takes a couple of minutes, then the water goes down the drain. Soon it fills up again. The beetles soon stop moving.
Man. I feel a little guilty for killing them. Maybe I should have just let them be.
I flick a spider away of my bathroom bag.
So many bugs.
Back at the porch, I’m sitting on the bench putting my coffee drink together. Dad sits next to me. “You doing okay?” he asks.
He’s ready to go. I do take a long time to get going.
“Yeah, just making coffee,” I say.
Savannah gives me a glowstick and we’re off.
We step over a few cattle gates and open fence gates. Dad and Savannah are flying. Rafiki and I struggle to keep up a pace so fast at 3:00 in the morning.
I already have to use the restroom. I drop my bag and go on the side of the road. Rafiki is taking off his fleece — he wore it this morning because he was a little chilly — and then I bolt to catch up with Dad and Savannah. Rafiki stays behind.
I’m alone now, caught in between people I cannot see. Dad and Savannah are two dark figures in the distance. Is that even them at all?
I keep running, my pack sliding around on my back noisily.
Their silhouettes are long and thin as I chase after them. It seems like I’ve been running for so long now. They were just moving so fast this morning! We do have 17 miles to walk to the water faucet, after all.
My headlamp is turned off because the night is lit by the moon. The night is quiet and eerie in the dark.
At last, their shadows grow bigger and bigger until I can see their packs!
The moon is about three quarters full, so it’s easy to see as we walk on the long dirt road. The dark aqueduct shimmers in the moonlight. Soon, we’re walking along the duct. It’s a wide pipe that has bolts in it every few feet that make it painful to walk on. The bolts poke into your feet as you walk.
We transition down to the sand, thinking that may be easier to walk on. By the lack of footprints, it seems as if people may have chosen to walk on the aqueduct pipe.
Our path is bordered by open plains scattered with low shrubs and Joshua trees. The moon is behind us, lighting our way and casting our shadows in front of us. I never knew the moon could provide such a pronounced shadow.
We listen to “Thriller,” by Michael Jackson. A little Halloween theme for the night hike. Rafiki puts on a 2026 Halloween playlist, which channels through songs like “The Addam’s Family” and a “Hedwig’s Theme Remix.”
The breeze is cool as we walk. I’m not accustomed to the 3.6 mph pace, but I’m pushing for it.
“I can still see Polaris,” Savannah says.
“How can you see it?” I ask.
“The Big Dipper is right there. From the bottom, if you go up, that is Polaris. The bottom of the Big Dipper is sort of in and out.”
I see the fading star blinking in and out of the Big Dipper. It’s the bottom of the ladle. Sure enough, if I draw a line straight up from the last of the Big Dipper, Polaris is directly linked to it.
A soft blue light colors the horizon. Soon it turns orange. The yellow sun breaks the surface of the trees and glows yellow around it.
The sky is light blue with shimmers of white cloud streaked through the sky. It looks like the wave of an ocean as it reaches the shore and rushes over your feet.
As soon as the sun makes its full debut, I can feel the warmth on my skin.
“Do you want to listen to something?” I ask Savannah. Neither of us have listened to anything on the trip so far.
“Sure!” she says.
We put on “The Coddling of the American Mind,” but stop it two thirds of the way through the introduction for a quick break. My feet are hurting, but the sun is bright and getting in my eyes. I need sunglasses.
We lounge for a few minutes — and a breakfast cookie for me — and I filter some water. My cap falls in the ground. Even though I pick blow it off, I still get sand in my mouth. It crunches in between my teeth. I cringe and spit it out. We reluctantly get up and keep walking. I continue playing the book for a while. The sun washes over us unpleasantly.
I wanted to finish the desert before listening to music or books, but these past couple of days have been hard. Today we’re racing the sun. Get to the underpass before it’s too hot!
We’re now pushing 3.4 mph. There was knowledge of trail magic at one of the road crossings, but nothing was there. We keep pushing.
The windmills grow closer as we walk. Some are lazily swinging their arms while others are completely still.
A bridge appears on the dusty road! We walk a little longer and peer over the bridge.
“The big cement box,” Dad whispers from thirty feet below us. He’s signing something, but I don’t know enough ASL to understand.
I realize he’s speaking so quietly because the others, including Bumper, who hiked here last night, are sleeping. Savannah and I fill our waters at the spicket, then head down under the bridge.
We quietly lay out our mats and lay down. Neither of us are that tired, but we force ourselves to rest anyways.
I drool all over my tent. I don’t know if I slept at all, or just dozed. I sure do drool a lot out here.
Savannah sits with me while I eat my last and only beef stick of the trip. I wish I could have gotten more in Agua Dulce!
“I’m so bored,” I say.
“Me too!” She laughs. “I want to sleep but I’m not tired. Oh! Look at the humming bird!”
A humming bird zips around. She’s a soft brown and sniffs out Bumper’s yellow pack. Her tail seems to wag as she hovers in the air for a moment.
She then flies to one of those plants that looks like green licorice and takes some nectar from its highlighter yellow flowers.
It feels so wrong to be laying around on such a sunny day, waiting to hike. It’s getting hotter outside by the second, so we have to wait for it to cool down before we hike uphill. Plus, I don’t want to go uphill in this heat.
I lay down and hear a woman speaking in a hushed voice. When I stop shuffling — I have my second KitKat in hand and am about to open it — I look up to see an older lady waving at me. I wave back, then jump up.
“Come with me,” I say to Savannah as I bound past her.
We climb up the hill from the dried up river bank. There are two ladies in a white jeep waiting for us.
“Hello!” they say. “We have cold drinks and snacks!”
They’re from Texas and have hiked part of the PCT. One of them actually hiked all the way to Tehachapi before she had to get off. We’ll be there in a couple of days!
We enjoy some Sunny D’s, Hostess cupcakes, cosmic brownies, apples, grapes, mozzarella cheese, chips, cokes, and protein shakes! It was really nice to have people to chat with on this long afternoon.
The sun beats down on us on this sandy road. The ladies open their car doors on the shade side, and I squish myself onto the floorboard of the backseat with my legs hanging out. A little tight, but at least it’s shaded! I’m in my fleece — since I let my shirt dry out — and I’m sweating already.
Soon Dad and Rafiki join us.
“Oh, hey guys!” I say. “Don’t worry! We are going to bring you some snacks.”
“I texted you!” Savannah says to Rafiki.
“Oh well, at least one of you thought of me,” Rafiki jokes.
We grab some snacks for the others and head back down.
We distribute the coke, Sunny D, and snacks to the others. There’s a guy name No Plan who I’ve not met before, so I offer him the trail magic. He is from South Korea, but his English is broken. We chat for a bit before I start on my blog.
Another hiker named Barcelona — the one who swayed us to leave at 3:00 AM — shows up. As I blog, we’re chatting a bit. It’s always a little hard for me when I’m trying to focus on blogging and other hikers want to chat. I’m a social person, so I don’t want to be rude but I do want to engage. This has happened to me a few times on trail now.
The others are on the other side of the wall that holds up the bridge. One hiker is snoring loudly next to me. A blast of wind hits us, and sand hits me in the face and gets all over my sleeping mat. I guess blogging can wait.
Barcelona points out a squirrel, but I wonder if it is the same long-tailed mouse I saw early this morning.
I spot a lizard who is shedding his skin. “New skin,” Barcelona jokes. The lizard zooms forward, then walks straight onto a sleeping No Plan’s pad! He crawls right up to his head before moving on!
“Good one,” I say. New skin is what we use to repair feet. I just put some on my hot spots in the arches of my feet yesterday.
The wind picks up and blows everyone’s sleeping mats around. No Plan’s sleeping mat flies over me, and Barcelona hands it to me. I hold it until No Plan grabs it. My sleeping mat flies onto Bumper after I move out of the sun, and Bumper’s flies onto Savannah.
I rest for a while and then wake to make some ramen. It’s got a nice smoky flavor — I somehow managed to burn the bottom — so I add some tuna.
Now it’s definitely gross.
Bumper is dehydrated, so I fold up his mat for him. In part, I’m ready to go. I’m thinking maybe we can hit some extra miles today!
It’s flat as we walk out from the bridge. The path is relatively smooth and narrow. Some Joshua trees and scrubby bushes surround us. The windmills towers over us like the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. Their massive fans spin as the wind picks up. It sounds like an airplane passing as they whoosh through the air.
We begin hiking uphill. Dad is now ahead, and I’m pushing to make the miles as quickly as I can. The wind whips in my ear, pushing me to the side as I power up the hill. It tries to take away my trekking poles, but I stab my trekking poles into the ground and pull myself forward.
My legs are tired. No way I’m doing more miles. My breath is heavy in my throat as I push my body up the hills for the next five miles. P
Rafiki, Savannah, and Socks are behind me. The sky turns dusky gray. We meander down and up the hills. The sun sets in the saddle of the hills.
We finally come to the river. It reminds me of where we camped right before we hiked Mission Creek. It’s almost dark, so I stuff my face with a plain bagel as Savannah shares her Oreos. I’m going to cowboy camp next to them, but there are ants on the ground! I’m right next to a hole!
I move my stuff up a tent site. I rush to get ready for bed. The stars are exploded over the canvas of the night sky. The river gently flows. A cricket chirps in the tree above me.
As I settle in, I see that there are ants crawling on the ground. Did Rafiki bring them over with his ground sheet? I pull my Tyvek back and see that I am, in fact, laying on an ant hole.
Great.
Too late to move now.
Hopefully I won’t wake up covered in ants tomorrow!
Goodnight, little critters.
The Wonderland Journal 
Leave a comment