Sunrise, I rise.
This morning I feel really good, must have been the several sodas and pizza.
I have drank more soda these last 2 weeks than I have in more than 10 years. Soda is flippin fantastic on trail.
Today’s plan is to try to make it to another spot called “Mary’s Place”, 18 miles from here. It’s a unique reliable water source. It also has an outdoor shower and a loo, both great things.
Leaving Mike’s place there is an instantaneous 2 mile 2000ft climb up a mountain. I felt great, I powered up that in record time. Eventually reached a summit where I was greeted with an amazing view of Mount San Jacinto, covered in snow and looming over the landscape in the distance.
Still feeling great I made amazing time and pushed solid miles. In fact I made such great time I needed to stop about 9 miles later to wait for my tramly, I left them pretty far behind.
Found a shady spot in the only valley out of the sun and nuzzled up near the only tree here. The sun still cut thru the trees leaves so I pulled out my umbrella, ate lunch and took a nap.
A couple hours later my tramly caught up and they rested. Eventually we all pushed on.
My partners feet were becoming blistered badly, he wasn’t able to put out many more miles. Unfortunately there was another nasty climb out into the desert heat. We pushed a couple more miles, ending about 3 miles from Mary’s place in the only spot that would hold all of our tents.
This spot was in an old river bed, sandy.
I checked the weather and saw there was a slight chance that it would rain on us, and instead of cowboy camping I set my tent up in the wind.
We all were pretty tired and started off to bed around 6pm. At 10pm it started to rain. The sunset here was tremendous.
The wind never gave up and it was also gusting at 25mph+.
It was hard to do anything, including sleep.
Some point during the night I wake up with my wet tent in my face, smacking me everytime the wind blew.
Half the tent collapsed and it fell on me. Quickly I unzipped the door, crawled out and put the stake back in the right spot, climbed back into my now cold and wet quilt.
That night was hard. Mentally bashing. Cold, wet, sore and tired. I didnt get much sleep.
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