Day 33 – Monday, June 26

PCT mile 551.0 to PCT mile 558.5 Tehachapi 
Day Total: 7.5 mile

We slept in by recent standards, until almost 7 a.m. I needed the sleep after a handful of very late nights and early mornings.

Unfortunately, we camped pretty high up on a ridge in the wind farm. As you can imagine, it was windy. So windy that the tent wall kept hitting my face while I attempted to sleep and I didn't sleep much. Fortunately, we only had 7.5 mostly downhill miles down to the road crossing to town.

The trail wound through hills of yet another burned area. There were charred logs everywhere. It's wild to think about how much of the trail so far has been in areas that have been recently burned.

We were picked up in a tractor trailer truck by a man with pretty limited English who drives produce from Bakersfield to Las Vegas a few times per week. Apparently he sees hikers along this stretch all the time. He told us that getting a hitch is far easier in Mexico, where he is from because people in the U.S. are more hesitant to pick up hitchhikers.

He drove us into the town of Tehachapi, where we found a bakery to sit and have a pastry while we figured out where to stay. A nice guy held the door for us going into the bakery and asked where we began our hike. We told him the Mexican border and a little about the PCT, and how it's going so far. He was so interested that he ended up buying our pastries and coffee! So nice!

We decided on a room at the La Quinta by the highway and they let us check in at 11 a.m. We were excited to crank up the air conditioning (or "make it winter" as we called it) and spent 24 hours relaxing in the hotel room. We walked to McDonalds wearing our rain suits while all of our clothes were in the wash and consumed a previously unimaginable quantity of nuggets and fries.

For dinner, we ordered Dominos pizzas to our hotel room. Stephen and I each got our own pizza because we've gotten to the point where one isn't enough to satiate us. Always hungry.

Our friend Sarah, who we met on our very first night on the trail, was also in Tehachapi. She had been a couple days ahead of us until her parents came to visit from Missouri and she had taken a couple days off to do some sightseeing with them. Sarah came over to our hotel room and we enjoyed catching up and trading stories about the miles since we've seen each other.

Stephen gave Sarah her trail name, 3G, on the first night after she admitted to carrying three GALLONS of water on the first day. She didn't have any info about where the next water would be, so she carried 24 pounds of water. Yes, you're reading that right. She has enjoyed the trail a lot more since downloading the water report.

3G rocks, and we're going to stick with her for the foreseeable future. (KAW)