Start: 2369.3
Stop: 2399
Today’s miles: 29.7
Total PCT miles: 2115.6
I woke to something tapping me on my hip around 2:30 in the morning. I was curled up, sleeping on my side, and kept feeling this tap, tap, tap.. I opened my eyes and realized it was my trekking pole hitting me and that half of my tent had come un-staked! I pulled out my earplugs and could immediately hear the howling and whistling of very intense wind.
I had to figure out how to get out of my tent without the rest of it toppling over, then search the ground around our tents to find my lost stakes and then re-do it all.. before I even got back inside, one had already blown loose-so I then searched for large rocks and put them over my stakes, praying they’d hold.
Thankfully, that worked and I was able to go back to sleep. When I woke to my alarm later this morning, there was dirt blown into my tent from the wind, and my eyelashes were coated with it! At least the views at sunset were great I guess. I yelled to Marquis to tell him about my tent collapsing during the night, and he had to get out once during the night, too! While we were packing, one of his stakes came loose. Come to find out, the wind sawed the guy line in half against a rock he had holding it down-crap!
Thankfully, no one ever showed to make us pay for the night, and we didn’t go looking, since we had such a rough go of things. We walked to a breakfast restaurant in the neighboring town and loaded up on all of the calories. I got a breakfast enchilada. Weird, but so great all the same. We resupplied and I got my Aunt Kathy a birthday card. We stopped by the post office and I sent her the card and some moon flower seeds.
We got back to trail by the afternoon, and by the time we got to it, I was actually happy with the dirt and sand instead of the asphalt. I’m going to look at it as appreciating everything instead of never happy with anything, haha! It really does require some adjustments in your thinking out here, because it’s very easy to get in a negative headspace and stay stuck in it. This trail is hard, and focusing on that makes it miserable, making you forget how incredible it truly is. It could also be the temperatures are a bit lower today, so you know, I didn’t sweat buckets or get swarmed by bugs.
The views were pretty and open with lots of hills and tons of scrub brush. We didn’t see any snakes and ended up camping in a wooded area with actual trees, so that was nice. The stream we followed along for a good while smelled awful, like sulfur or rotten eggs.. thankfully right before camp there was a different stream coming in across the trail, higher and away from the smelly creek that we were able to fill up at.
It’s cold tonight, like, I’m in all my layers cold. Marquis and I ate dinner sitting on a nice little wooded log that some Boy Scouts of long ago turned into a bench. Marquis actually used my JetBoil and had his first ever hot meal on trail! He’s considering buying a stove for when he jumps up to Northern California, because it’s going to be pretty damn cold when he hikes through. This really makes me happy. Nothing warms your body up and protects you from hypothermia like a hot meal.
It’s not even 7:30 and we’re both tucked into our quilts and ready for bed. Well I am, he might already be asleep-I think I hear a faint snore over there! Ha. So, with that, it’s bedtime and earplug time! Sweet dreams!