Day 39

May 17

Mile 592 - Mile 611

By 7am this morning, the sun was cooking our tent. The bright light glowed through our tent walls and got us up and out more quickly than usual even though we had slept in late. We heard a ton of people pass by us this morning and as we packed up our friend Julien caught up to us. 

We continued on the trail through the rest of the burn area we were in, into a more rolling series of foothills, all grass covered and shaded with oak trees. This is definitely not the type of trail we expected here. We thought we'd be trudging through intense desert sections right now so this is quite the pleasant surprise.

This is not desert.

The weather was favorable for hiking as the sun was filtered through a thin layer of high altitude clouds. It looks like more weather might be building because we saw some big puffy clouds out in the distance, but for today the temperature and lack of intense sun has been excellent for hiking.

...Other animals?

Lush forest.

We hit 600 today!

Tiny purple flowers carpeting the ground.

At the end of the day we stopped at a campground for water and, since water sources are far and few between out here, we experienced quite the pile-up of hikers while we sat and filtered. The water was clear and clean and the awesome flow made it easy to re-up.

Most other hikers called it a day here but we pushed on (in our usual fashion) and hiked till around dusk, a few more miles down the trail. 

Roadwalking back to the trail from the campground water source.

Mike with lupine(?)

Mike, sunset, ghostly burned trees, and tiny yellow flowers.

This section was another burn area, but it was gorgeous in the evening light. 

Standing near a blow-down on the trail. 

There were great mounds of rounded rocks stacked on top of each other, sometimes with so much colorful lichens on them that it looked like the rocks were dripping with paint. 

We made camp in a field of beautiful yellow flowers in a small saddle and left the fly off our tent, falling asleep underneath a clearing sky while the stars slowly became brighter in the night sky.