Miles hiked: 15
Mile Marker: 703.4
That afternoon coffee was a bad idea. It’s 2:00 AM and I roll around and around on my sleeping pad. The black canvas above me holds a billion shimmering stars. The Milky Way is cast from one side of the sky to the other. Even when I roll on my stomach, the low end of the sky is still filled with stars.
At least I get a show while I can’t sleep, plus some slight panicking about the rustling in the bushes that is inevitably those pesky kangaroo mice.
5:00 AM comes too soon. It’s already light outside. Just fifteen miles today! I hurry to pack my things. It’s 5:45 and we’re walking through the scrubby scenery.
The hills are glowing on the horizon. The shadows highlight the rust-colored rocky terrain. The thin line of yellow above the hills fades into a light blue.
We walk along rocky dirt for a while. Dad pauses to look at a flower. It’s called a flatbud prickly poppy. It looks like a white daisy with a yellow egg yolk middle.
We pass a petrified coyote — I have no idea how it died — and it’s frozen in place as if it underwent a poor taxidermy job.
Little rocks now write ‘700’ in the dirt.
We made it 700 miles! Every hundred miles feels like such a big accomplishment!
“There’s a creek we can swim in just ahead!” Dad says as the rest of us grab water from a buggy water source. Bumper has gone ahead too.
A moment later, we find Dad’s trekking pole stabbed into the ground, a sign post for where to go.
We go down into the grassy and overgrown patio to stand on a sandy floor.
I take my shoes and socks off and wade into the water.
This is cold!
The water shocks me as I swim in, holding onto the mossy rocks because the current is so strong.
Soon Luxy Lucie, Savannah, Rafiki, and I have all joined Dad, who is sitting up on the rock throne with the water rushing past him.
I tear a fist full of the moss that looks like grinch hair. I ball it up and throw it at Dad. He’s turned away from us at the moment.
Savannah joins me. Dad turns his head with a smile on his face. He faces away again. I throw the moss at him and it splats on his back.
This is the start of a moss-throwing war, in which the four of us unsuccessfully try to hit Dad with moss balls and he successfully hits us. I’m the worst aim by far.
Rafiki and I float a bit further down the river. The current pulls me with strong arms. I wedge myself on a rock. This positional change now has everyone throwing moss at Rafiki’s cowboy hat.
The water cools us down and invigorates the spirit. This is the mark of the end of the desert! We will soon be in the Sierras. This hot, dusty, dry terrain will soon be behind us.
We crawl out of the water — Savannah pulls me to home base because I can’t walk upstream so well — and continue our hike.
Big rocks now border the path. It’s getting hotter outside. I remind myself that we’re almost to Kennedy Meadows!
Cheeseburger!
The energy boost from the water has worn off and I plug in some music for the last stretch.
We all walk in a line. Luxy Lucie has decided not to listen to anything today. She’s trying to give her brain a break from noise and stimulation. She normally listens to music, so this is challenging.
Luxy Lucie is a beast. Her injured knee plus her sickness this week have complicated this hike and added an extra layer of challenge.
Despite being sick this week, she pressed on. She was congested, fatigued, and feeling awful, yet she pressed on.
I’m impressed!
We walk into long stretch of trail with sparse shrubs scattered across the grounds. We’re in a fishbowl of hills, except behind us is a little wall of trees. The sun beats down on us as we walk.
I can see the road ahead!
My legs keep spinning until we reach asphalt!
It’s always hard on walks like these because we reach our destination, but then we have a long road walk to the next place.
It’s very quiet out here, with there only being two stores in the town.
As tradition goes, we receive applause as we walk up to the general store. People whoop and cheer for us.
The end of the desert! 700 miles! What an incredible journey!
The best part?
We have a long way to go.
This is the end of chapter one.
We proceed to step onto the hiker-filled deck. People and their packs are spread out everywhere. Old and new faces surround us. There’s a little window with a couple guys working hard to cook up burgers. I order a chicken avocado bacon sandwich.
From the little store inside, I buy a vanilla cream soda and an orange cream soda. It takes a while for my sandwich to come out. I’m pretty wiped after this week. We did such big miles.
When my sandwich does come out, it’s quite good! The avocado spread is salty and the chicken is moist!
Dad and I go to Two Foot Adventures. They have one of these stores in Julian. When I was there, I regretted not having Mary, the owner, look at my feet.
Mary is a thru-hiker herself, having hiked the PCT in 2014. She knows what hikers need and works hard to provide for them. She said this year that many women have had lots of blisters. She mentioned that this generation of Topo’s — the trail runner I wear — have been very problematic.
We spend some time trying on shoes. Mary has two air stream trailers that she sells her items out of.
I summon Dad for help.
“Good job, Dad,” Mary says to my dad. Mary is a little shorter than me and wears glasses. “Your daughter’s feet look great. Nice and wide. This is the work of twenty years of good shoes.”
I grew up with my dad always taking me shoe shopping. He’s a believer in the natural shape of the foot that hasn’t been molded by skinny shoes. Dad, having been in the military, experienced poor footwear. I hate that the military issues such awful boots.
“Your feet: you know what you need,” Dad says.
I wish he was more direct in helping me. It’s easy when someone tells you what to do. However, that’s not how I will become more confident and capable out here. I appreciate his approach to teaching me.
I end up buying the altra Olympus 6 in men’s. My feet are wide, which is a good thing. However, society does consider long feet to be elegant compared to my hobbit feet. The Olympus 6 is the previous line of the Olympus. I get them 30% off!
Savannah’s mom, Terri, drove seven hours to see her daughter! She gave us a ride to the next stop: Grumpy’s Bear Resort, a restaurant that lets hikers camp for free.
We order dinner here. I see Rotem The food takes so long to come out because there are so many hikers here! The three of us girls go to the showers while we wait for our food to come out.
I eat a pizza — package the rest for lunch tomorrow — and walk the quarter mile to set up my tent.
The tent goes up and I go down! I blog for a little bit, but soon realize as I’m typing, my eyes are closed. I keep typing and the same thing happens.
Okay. I’m falling asleep over here. I’ll finish this tomorrow, but I am a day and a half behind on my blogs! Oh well. We’ll be here for two days!
The Wonderland Journal 
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