The Weather Actually Changed

After night hiking for 10 miles, I was convinced I had actually figured out how to handle the desert. It was quite lovely. The following morning I was up and moving fairly early to get to water before the day got really hot. It was the real desert, with some fairly long flat sections, just walking through the sand and cacti.

It wasn't actually too bad in the sun, but I could feel the heat in the sand through my shoes. To get out of the heat I went into town and had a piece of pie. It seemed like a great way to avoid the hot part of the day. After that day, the weather finally got cooler. Some clouds came in over the mountains and the oppressive sun was finally covered up.

Last night I woke up to some slushy snow covering my tarp. It has been rainy all day, but it made for a perfect day for me. I only had 8 miles to get into Warner Springs where I have a food drop waiting for me at the post office. The post office won't be open until Monday so I had to wait around no matter how many miles I did today. This allowed me to stay at camp until the afternoon while I watched the rain come down. Then I walked through some lovely prairie in the rain. At the end of it, I hit the very nice community of Warner Springs. The community center in town has a little resupply store in it and allows hikers to camp in the lawn behind the building. Many seem to be taking advantage of that, as there are probably 30-40 people here.

I learned that the donations from thru-hiker season forms the entire budget of the community center and allows it to remain open all year for the kids of the town. In the evening, the school across the street had a pasta dinner as a fundraiser. It is always nice when I get the impression that the hikers get enormous benefits from a small town but the town itself also gets a large benefit from the hikers. It seems like the perfect scenario.

So I am currently at mile 109.5 and tomorrow I'll get my food drop then head out of town. The following section has a section of trail that has been closed for a while due to a wildfire. There is a reroute but it doesn't look that interesting. I will have to decide if I want to take the pretty easy hitch into Idyllwild to skip past it or if I want to do the 15-20 mile reroute. I guess we'll see! Even though there aren't state lines to mark progress (like the AT) there are some small landmarks.