Day 45: Somewhere on Pine Canyon Road - Mile 526.6

I heard Homegirl breaking camp when I woke up. I lay there for a while and let Josh wake up on his own. We broke camp and hit the road again around 7am. We finished our road walk in the cool of the morning and arrived at Hiker Town around 9:30.

We read a sign on the gate before opening it and it gave us directions around the property. There were several buildings all with old-timey movie type fronts on them. There was a post office where we paid our donation and retrieved our resupply box, a hotel, a jail, etc. It was a really trippy place with roosters cruising around and dogs, even a litter of new born puppies!

We took our boxes and went into 'the hiker lounge' which is a converted garage, and there we saw Homegirl, Detour and Lap Dog hanging out inside. They gave us more of the lay of the land. The whole property reminded me of my grandmas house with that typical desert smell of dirt and dried out plastic and it made me feel right at home. I took a shower and washed my hair which was LONG OVERDUE. After, Josh and I went thru our resupply box and cursed our past selves for sending too much food and not sending important stuff like my medicine. I don't know what we were thinking.

It was nearing lunch time and the group decided to use the phone number posted on the back of the fridge to call the local store who shuttles hikers. We were picked up by the owner at noon and went to the convenience store three miles away where we ate hamburgers and ice cream and whatever else we wanted from the shelves. Detour got a triple patty hamburger and it was bigger than her! We all chatted about the trail and our thoughts on everyone hitching around. I guess there was a group of people who were taking a hitch from the Saufly's to the Anderson's and skipping 24 miles of trail that was not closed. What's up with that? It seems everyone hitched the Powerhouse fire closure too. Whatever works for you I guess, hike your own hike and all that jazz, but it does make me not feel quite so inadequate over my progress on the trail when I'm only a day or so behind people who took a hitch. Talking with them also made me feel better about my decision to skip the zero at the Saufly's as they said there was a lot of people smoking pot late into the night and the girls couldn't get to sleep either from the people partying or having loud sex. Jeeze. I think 22 year old me would have loved it there, 32 year old me? Not so much.

After we ate we took our empty wrappers to the counter to settle up and the owner drove us back to hiker town. When we went back into the lounge we were greeted by Angelina and a few others who were packing up to head out. We talked with them for a while before they departed and we stayed back waiting for a package to come in the mail with an additional iPhone cord, but it never arrived so we decided to push on without it. We told the owner of the property we would get it in the fall after the hiking season and told him what it was. He gave is an extra iPhone cord he had there and we told him to keep the package and we'd call it even. The trail provides, right? :-)

We set out about 3pm and did another long road walk toward the L.A. Aqueduct. There were big storm clouds looming in the distance behind us and we were glad we weren't back there! We followed the aqueduct for the rest of the day and even walked on top of it for a stretch until we tired of trying to time our steps to go over the rivets. The aqueduct went completely underground and we saw coyote prints immortalized in the concrete. We also saw a million hoof prints and scat that looked kind of like deer and I commented that it is odd for us to see so many prints and no herd and just then we spotted a massive herd of sheep grazing. We bleated at them and they bleated back and it was super cute! When I woke up this morning I would have never thought I would walk through a herd of sheep that afternoon. Each day here is so unpredictable and awesome.

Josh's feet were bothering him so we found a place to camp on the side of the aqueduct and service road that was partially hidden from the road. We are in private property boundaries so we don't want to be too flashy about our presence.

Right now it's 8:45 and it smells like desert rain. We plan to getup early and try to knock out 18 miles tomorrow having only done 15 today. I'm glad it is going to be cool outtomorrow too with that storm brewing.

Until tomorrow, goodnight.