K, today’s June 4th. I missed a couple days here. The, the batteries in my microcassette recorder finally out, and that ah led me to figure out that I had been recording stuff on the, over ah, I’ve been recording over earlier entries on my previous tape. So, thankfully, I would’ve done it more except the batteries ran out. Thankfully I didn’t lose too much.

Um. I guess I left off spending the night on the outskirts of town in Independe nce. And that was pretty much ah, exactly… the next day anyway we woke up and walked into town. Pretty much everything happened the way I thought it would. We got groceries, had breakfast, got the package, and all that stuff. Um. In front of the post office… I was walking around Pete was on the phone. Ah, there was a guy with a couple supply packages there. And ah, he noticed I was travelin too. And he was the hippie type, had a beard and a bandana on his head and ah, asked where I was goin to and thought maybe he could gimme a lift. And so I told him I was just going up to this trailhead, ah, fifteen miles west of town. And ah, he, he said he’d try to help me if he could and sure enough, he ah… after we finished our errands we got together with this crazy hippie family. I assume it was a family, the relationships weren’t clear, but I was ah… They were driving a truck which had a Proclamation of Peace, which they were spreading, ah written out on the front ah of a camper on the back of the truck. And ah, I can’t remember the exact words of the proclamation unfortunately, but they were spreading the Proclamation of Peace. And ah, the elderly one named Daniel who was missing most of his front teeth, and ah, had a big bushy beard. Bright shiny sparkle eyes. And ah, there’s girl who was about the same age as the guy who helped me out – couldn’t a been too much older than me. And ah, really pretty long brown hair braided in the back. And she had a couple of kids in her lap in the back of the truck. Her name was Katherine, I think, I’m not sure about that. I don’t remember the kids’ names. And the guy who helped me out was William. And ah, Katherine and the kids hopped in the back in the camper, and me and Daniel and William and Pete all hopped in the front of the truck and they took us up to the Onion Valley trailhead. And ah, it was a pretty interesting experience. We kinda talked about what we do. They were, turned out to be not only spreading the Proclamation of Peace but also herb gathering. And, when we got up to the trailhead William disappeared and came back about two minutes later with enough, ah, food – like ochre and onions that he had found to feed a couple people for a meal. It was pretty impressive.

And we thanked em and said our goodbyes and hauled ass up the trail to Kearsarge Pass where we met up with the backpackers who had been dropped off the day before, and we caught a ride with their – the people who had dropped them off. The, it was a father and son backpacker, we never caught their names unfortunately. And ah, it was his, the father’s wife and the rest of the kids that had given us a ride into Independence. So we met with them at the top of the pass and chatted some more, and this kid just had tons of energy, running around swinging on ropes playing with the ice axes throwing blocks of snow down the hill, getting totally wet. And ah, (laugh) we kind of sympathized with his dad a little bit. And ah, they looked like, they were originially headed to Forester Pass. But after talking to us and seeing the amount of snow that was up there they decided to do something else.

So we on, continued on our way and got back to the Pacific Crest Trail, it was startin to get late in the day. I imagine we hit the trailhead around 11. And ah, by the time we got back the nine miles to the PCT it was gettin later. But we still managed to make it ah, about 2 1/2 miles up to Glen Pass, which was kind of a pain in the butt. Just scrambling up rock, loose rocks and stuff like that. But it was a really pretty little, little kinda smaller closed in pass. And ah, went up and over the back of it. It was late in the day so the snow was wet and nasty. And we tried to kinda glissade down the back. And another coupla miles to Rae Lakes. We- we got down pretty quick but the snow was so wet it just wouldn’t allow for true glissading. And ah, we spent the night at Rae Lakes which are really high. And there was just one little melted patch of nice soft grass for us to sleep in. Amidst a huge bowl of snow and frozen lakes. And ah, we actually had a pretty good night there. And ah, was that where we woke up this morning? Oh my God.