Happy Days are Here Again!

We now have photo capabilities. I figured it out!

After that scary night at Kitchen Creek, we had a  full day of climbing to Mt. Laguna. Our energy levels are off from each other, this was my day to be sluggish. As we continued the 2000 ft climb, we passed a couple who were trail running. They must have noticed we weren't hiking that great, so they left us a couple of Starbursts on a rock up ahead of us. That was such a nice unexpected burst of energy, and made the day much brighter .

(The hike into Mt. Laguna, finally)
(Gummi Bear is pictured at the bottom of post)

I will relate the story Tom told in the comment section at a later time, I have much to cover in this post.

We finally made it to Mt. Laguna at about 6 pm that night, then decided to rest the next day, which put us behind schedule for a day. We had a great time with the other hikers, then moved on.

We made it about 10 miles when I realized that I was burning too bad. It hurt to move my arms, I knew I was dangerously burned and needed to hike in long sleeves, only I didn't have a long sleeve shirt. We needed to get back to Mt. Laguna. Pronto! Lego (Mark) approached a couple who were having a picnic and asked for a ride back. They were familiar with the trail, the guy had the trail name Snap, and agreed to take us back to Mt. Laguna, wait for us to shop, then brought us back to where we were. We are so grateful to them, we were able to continue on in comfort.

Water sources are about 15 miles apart through the Anza Borrego Desert, most are clean water from fire tanks buried in the hillside, but some are just stagnant horse troughs. This particular trough had a water spigot inside the trough, but we always filter it anyway. We are carrying 4 liters at all times, it is always better to have too much water than not enough. Dehydration is always present, we just try to minimize it.

Mark and Carol at water trough

The pounding our feet are taking is incredible. The hot sand (and it is hot), the continuous walking all lead to blisters and foot pain. We are now at mile 77, Scissors Crossing. We are also now hiking with Carol, a 30 something obstetric nurse, and Anne (Gummi Bear), who is from Norway. We have many different names for us and our group, they range form Crusty and  Crunchy (us) to The Motel 4 Group. We may lose Carol as we travel to Kickoff this weekend. Everybody has blisters and we have been resting in the town of Julien to let our bodies heal. But Julian is expensive, and we are anxious to get started again. Sunday morning we will be moving north, the rest has been good for us.

We also received some trail magic on our way in to Scissors Crossing. A van went by us as we were hiking, then turned around and stopped just ahead of us. These two guys opened up the back of their van and produced turkey sandwiches, cold water, and cold beer for those who wanted it. It was so unexpected and appreciated after a very hard and hot day. These two had always wanted to do something for thru hikers, and now they have. It was a lot of fun for all involved.

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