Sunday, May 10, 2015

Day 27

May 5
Mile 383 - Mile 402.8
For whatever reason, we had a heck of a time trying to motivate today. We woke up late around 8am and messed around in camp for quite a while before hiking the half a mile or so to Little Jimmy Spring. 
Our site in the am.
On the way to the spring, we took a quick stop to soak in the views:
Sea of clouds.
Just as we stopped we heard a commotion on the backside of the slope we had just come around and turned to see two Bighorn Sheep come bounding down the decline to escape us. We didn't have time to snap a pic but it was a real treat to have caught a peek at these large wild animals in their environment. 
Little Jimmy Spring
The pic doesn't quite do it justice, but this spring was beautiful. The water was perfectly clear and nice and cold.
It took a leisurely 30 minutes to fill up on water and then we headed over to the campground to use the, ahem, facilities before we set off for the day. 
Hanging out on the tables, not hiking.
We ended up staying a little longer than we realized and before we knew it it was 11am and we'd hiked a half mile so far. Whoops.
We finally got our butts in gear and hoofed it a couple miles to where the trail crossed Highway 2. Here, we had to make a decision about which route we would take to bypass a section of trail that was closed in order to protect an endangered species of frog.
Another half an hour of debate later, we headed off down the highway on a 3 mile roadwalk. Roadwalking can typically be really boring, hard on your feet and joints, and sometimes dangerous depending on how much traffic there is. Luckily this highway had very light traffic and we had a great time entertaining ourselves along the way with what we called "Highway Games 2015".
View of road from above.
View from the road of another front of weather moving in. 
Tunnels!
The first attraction along the roadwalk was a series of tunnels we walked through. 
Above is a video of our experience. Just like how it's neat to honk when you drive through, It was fun making different sounds and listening to the echoes as we walked. Excuse Mike's sneeze.
Next up was a concrete drainage chute we found that had some brambles in the middle where some pinecones were caught. This was the first official game of Highway Games 2015 - pinecone bowling. The goal was to roll your pinecone down the chute, avoiding the brambles. If you got your pinecone through, that was one point. If you managed to knock additional pinecones out as well, those were extra points.
Mike's turn at pinecone bowling.
It was a very heated match with a tie at the end which Sparrow broke with an impressive multi-pinecone score. 
Further down the road we found many other games including rock pitching (throw your stone across the road into a grated drainage tube BUT it must be thrown far enough in that it falls down the chute and makes a plinking noise), pinecone hoops (throw your pinecone, standing on the edge of the pavement, into the metal tube - first person to score wins), and pinecone spearing (use your trekking pole to spear not one, but two pinecones on to the end of your pole at the same time). 
Sparrow trying his hand at pinecone hoops.
There were also a bunch of drainage chutes that we had fun dropping rocks into. Here's a video of one of them:
FYI, chutes were open-ended and the rocks would just roll a little down the hillside then. There was no harm that we could see in any of our Roadwalk Games.
Anyway, we made the best of the detour and five miles later we arrived at the Buckhorn Campground, the end of our road walk. From there we took a trail for 1.5 miles along another canyon to finally meet back up with the PCT.
After a short but steep climb out of the canyon, we joined an old road which made for easy walking and some great views of clouds rolling through a neighboring valley. 
By this point the temperature began to cool off and we were picking up our (incredibly slow) pace, excited to be reaching our next milestone:
400 miles!
Further down the trail... Another 400 mile marker! Different guides have slightly different mileage a which results in these discrepancies.
Aaaand another. We think this was the "real" one.
We caught another killer sunset as we ended the day and decided to stop just past a campground where many other hikers were stopping for the night. We were fairly satisfied with how we turned our progress around in the latter half of the day and we all agreed to take tomorrow a bit more serious in terms of mileage. 










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