Day 30

May 8

Mile 444 - Mile 468

We woke up fairly rested and more importantly, dry. We were surprised more hikers didn't sleep in the lodge - there was only 5 of us in there while everyone else slept in their tents out in the rain. Go figure.

We left the KOA, crossed some train tracks, and began a climb up into the mountains again towards Agua Dulce.

The weather was great once again, cloudy and overcast in these desert sections that can be quite exposed.

We took a lunch break in an awesome little cave in the otherwise barren landscape.

Here's the stark and barren landscape I'm speaking of.

Almost to Agua Dulce, we walked through this awesome tunnel whose shape reminded us of the triangular PCT symbol.

Just outside of Agua Dulce was this amazing place called Vasquez Rocks. The rock formations were incredible with different visible layers and little holes where birds were nesting. We learned a lot of movies have been filmed here and actually, as we walked through, we noticed a music video being filmed. In the past days we've seen quite a few signs on fences and buildings for film crews, and the day before while trying to hitch out of Acton we saw another movie being filmed. Although it made the hitching difficult because most of our potential rides were distracted by the filming, it was interesting to see.

Wavy rocks.

We didn't spend much time in Agua Dulce, only enough to grab some fried chicken from the grocery, and head back out. After all, we had just spent time in civilization at the KOA and so we got back on track to roadwalk out of town.

Interesting looking garage door on our roadwalk.

Once again out of town, we climbed a few thousand feet over shrubby mountains heading once again up into the cloud line. Here I am on part of the climb. 

The sunset was this incredible little sliver, compressed by all the clouds.

Our friend Croom up ahead in the fog.

Up top, the mountains were shrouded in clouds and it was a bit chilly so we hustled to the water source, a little spring, that we reached around dusk. We challenged ourselves and went about 5 more miles in the dark to a tiny ridge line campspot where we slept in the clouds under eerie power lines that hummed and buzzed and snapped all night.