Got up this morning a little, a little bit really later than we had intended. W e had intended to get up super early and walk until our siesta. But ah, we got up at, a little bit before the sunrise like usual, and filtered water, got start ed. Went up the climb which looked a lot worse on the map than it really was. I don’t know how many feet it was, maybe even a thousand, but, or more. But it’ s a climb up into the Sawmill Mountain area. Let’s see about seven miles into the day we wanted to hit Upper Shake Canyon Campground for our last water before, really a stretch of unknown waterlessness, which we’re on now. And ah, we did that okay, Upper Shake Campground was, had a really good stream at it, but it was about a little over half a mile I’d say off the trail. And ah, we went down to it and we pumped ourselves out about two gallons of water, and had a good drink too. And ah, continued on the day not really knowing what to expect but, up here in the mountains we can look out over Antelope Valley and the Mojave, and just see the barren hot desert down there. But in these mountains here it looks really like a moist area. We’re walking in the shade of trees, and we’re sitting down for our lunch right now in the green grass. The temperature’s totally reasonable, so… And it looks like we stay up here for another, oh let’s see the best guess… nine miles? Something like that? (Pete: yeah) Eight or nine miles? Well probably like 7 or 8 miles until we start the descent down into the desert. And then we hit a road, and we go take our first jump where the trail goes off and we don’t have a map for it. So we don’t really know where our next water is. So we go, we just got enough water to do 20 miles, or basically get us through breakfast tomorrow morning. And hope we run into some by then. My guess is that we are supposed to run across a place called Lancaster Road, and I think we can probably get water from a house there. I seem to recall something along those lines. So ah, we won’t get that far today, I doubt, but we’ll probably, by this evening, get down out of these mountains and into the desert. And ah, tomorrow will be a very different day, I imagine. But today so far has just been beautiful, and we’re continuing to eat well, and keeping our moods up. And ah, really so far so good, this desert stuff isn’t so bad (nervous laugh). Just yet.
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Pete: Well you could just go down the trail and catch a ride.
Guy1: Well that’s what we’re going to try and do, yeah.
Guy2: And you’ll see 2, you’ll see 2 vehicles down here ah…
Guy3: Well we’re going with em.
Pete: Yeah, we’re going.
Dylan: Yeah, if we weren’t going into the desert, we might take you up on that.
(babble)
Woman: How far have you guys come?
Dylan: Uh, probably five hundred miles now.
Guy2: Where are you guys from?
Pete: Ah I’m from San Diego, and we started at the Mexican border.
Guy2: And where are you headed to?
Pete: To Canada.
Guy2: Really? You’re doing uh…
Pete: Yeah the whole trail. This is our 27th day, I think.
Guy2: Well, best of luck to you guys. You guys want a cold beer?
Pete: Well…
Woman: You’re welcome to.
(everyone babbles)
Guy2: You guys camping here tonight?
Pete: Well we’re gonna try an hit the desert before, uh before dark. So yeah, so we can get up early and start across it.
Guy2: Well it’s downhill from here, just go downhill.
Pete: Yup, Yup. So you guys just drove like, how far down do you think you drove?
Woman: Oh about a hundred, two hundred yards. You’ll see when it starts turning really sharp. And it gets really narrow…
Guy2: A novice driver and an experienced driver, the experienced driver went off the road and got a flat tire.
Pete: oh no. huh, well, it’s not a bad place to do it…
Guy3: We’ll go with you guys.
Pete: ok.
Woman: if you want a beer, go ahead. You want a beer?
Dylan: ah well, you know, I would except they’ll dry you out, and we’re doing our best to keep hydrated.
Guy2: Yeah, we’re not going to Canada, so…
Guy3: _They_ are.
Pete: Yeah.
Dylan: You have any high fat candy bars or anything like that we’ll take you up on it.
Woman: How about string cheese, we have string cheese.
Dylan: String cheese is high fat, sure.
(they babble)
Dylan: Tell you what, yeah, you can reward us for the info with some string cheese, cause that’ll just boost us right up there.
(crunch crunch walking some faint voices)
Dylan: Well I’ll tell you what, Three Points is a village, it’s not a town or anything, so you’ll probably find some help there but I don’t think you’re gonna find a hotel or anything like that…
(more babble)
Pete: mind if we take a photo?
Guy2: No not at all. Tell your friends, these are those four idiots.. (stop)
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Ok sorry about that if that was totally incomprehensible, but just had to try to record some of that. Today’s Monday May 13th. That happened last night. Um, let’s see after siesta yesterday we kinda climbed up over another mountain. And ah, the trail got nasty for awhile, and then it got nice again. And ah, just b efore we started descending, the trail got really beautiful. It’s just like, li ke walking in a park somewhere. Just grass and trees, meadows, fields. All kin d of in rolling hills. And then we hit a jeep road and it started going down. And I noticed a few times as we were descending the road that ah, there were pre tty fresh tracks going down there. And that in places the road looked pretty hairy and you’d have to be kind of crazy to drive a car down it. But (laugh) but people had made it through, you know, over big old dead logs, and there were still these fresh tracks going down. But I didn’t really pay it any more attention than that. And we continued down. And ah, just where the road stops there’s a little picnic table with some wood, just kind of a little camp site. And ah, there’s, we see four people there. And at first we think, ah, oh they’re other hikers. And we look around, and they’ve got no backpacks, and so then we think, oh, they’re day hikers. And then one of them yells out “Get ready to meet four of the biggest idiots you’ve ever met in your life!” And ah, and they all come rushing up to us asking which way, up or down the trail, they should go in order to find some help. (Pete: a highway) Or a highway or some hotel, or something. And we’re, what? these people are in a different world. And they offer us a beer and I explain to them from my guidebook that they just need to go down the trail and they were like, “Oh, yeah, the Pacific Crest Trail. We had no idea we were on the Pacific Crest Trail, you know we, well the road was supposed to serve these campsites, and we never should’ve gone past it, and we did and it started to, to switchback, and we’re just totally stuck about a hundred meters down the trail…” And I’m like, with cars? And they’re all “yeah, a jeep and toyota truck.” And ah, these people, meanwhile, they’re like wanna beer? wanna beer? wanna beer? wanna beer? (laugh) (relates the string cheese part) And we kind of give them directions of which way to go, and we’re in a hurry cause its getting dark at this time, and we want to get down by the road before dark. That was kind of our goal for the day. And ah, so we take some pictures of their cars which are truly truly stuck on the trail, on a switchback.
Pete: totally high centered. Flat tires.
Just in a true mess. And ah, you know, a couple, two of the people especially are just drinking and getting jolly. And ah, they’re marching on down…
Pete: They were… It was three guys and a woman and ah, and evidently they had all been in the 82nd Airborne, in Vietnam, and they said, “Tell em that you ran into the 82nd Airborne!”
(laugh) stuck in their cars. So it was another two or three miles down the trail, and we did it real quick and kind of set up where the trail hit the road and waited to make sure they got down ok. And pretty soon they come along, and they’re singing out loud, you know, they guy’s who were drinking especially, they were singing ah airforce songs: “I wanna be an airforce ranger, I wanna live a life of danger. I wanna go to Viet Nam, I wanna kill old Charlie Cong.” And ah, yeah pretty much just that kind rambuncousness. And we make sure they’re doing ok, and they thank us again, and head off singing on down the highway towards Three Points, so god knows what happened when they finally hit Three Points village that night, which apparently had a store and a campground, and that’s about it, and some telephones. So ah, that was pretty funny, just wanted to record some of it. We ended up just sleeping by the road there, where we cooked dinner.