5.25.18. 19.1 miles.

Today I woke up to my alarm at 5:40. I’m going to start pretending that we’re starting to hike 15 minutes before we actually planned so that I wake up earlier and I’ll actually be ready by the time we want to leave. It just takes me so long to get ready in the mornings! Mostly because I don’t want to get out of my quilt.

We started hiking a little before 7 am. I’m really enjoying my current group of LOL, Butters, and Hot Mess. Hot Mess hikes pretty fast, but Butters is around my speed so it works out well!

After about 3 miles we had our big climb of the day, but it honestly wasn’t too bad, and was actually really pretty! We got great overhead views of the wind farm we walked through yesterday and the plants in these mountains were really pretty and smelled really good! At mile 549 we passed this super random place that has chairs, umbrellas, a water cache, benches, and sometimes trail magic! Whoever owns this spot is pretty amazing.

We took our lunch break at 10 miles but it wasn’t the best spot. Even though it had been windy while hiking, the spot was super hot and had lots of ants. LOL & Hot Mess left early to find a spot with shade, while Butters & I stayed behind since we had our umbrellas to make shade. We eventually packed our things up and went to go find them- they found a tree about a mile later so we took another break bc we all had cell service and were looking up things about Tehachapi.

The afternoon seemed to go by pretty quickly. We descended from the mountains back into another wind farm that was ginormous! So many wind turbines, it was crazy. And to see how far they went in the distance. It was crazy windy though, pretty much once we got into the turbine area. I could barely stand up at certain points.

finally got a decent picture of one of these guys!

We got down to a picnic table near the first road to Tehachapi. Our plan was to camp somewhere in between the two roads because my parents were going to pick us up at 9 am the next day at highway 58. We evaluated that idea and decided to stick with it, and kept hiking on.

Once we left the first road, we went straight into the wind farm and it was even windier than earlier! I’ve never felt wind like that before. I can’t really give a good estimate on speeds but maybe there were gusts of 50+ mph? There was one pretty steep small hill that the wind literally pushed me up, and each time I lifted my trekking poles off the ground, I could feel the wind try to take them. It was crazy. My pee rag was also whipping around and hit my face. Ugh.

Eventually we came to a tree/shrub that actually offered amazing protection from the wind. We wanted to get a little closer to the highway so we wouldn’t have to hike much tomorrow, but we had no idea if we’d find anything as protected as this shrub, so decided to set up camp here. LOL set up her tent, but Hot Mess, Butters, and I decided to cowboy camp. I have to say, it is super crazy looking at the wind farm from my quilt! Right now, it’s finally getting dark and there are so many lights on the turbines! And they sound like airplanes, but it’s not annoying. Hopefully I sleep ok tonight, but town is tomorrow, which I’m really looking forward to since I haven’t taken a zero in 10 days!