Journal Entries

Mt. Baldy off in the distance with the snow.

May 18th- Day 27- 19.1 miles from Cleghorn Picnic Area at mile 328.1 to Swarthout Canyon at mile 347.2

I slept okay last night, but I think I was restless because I drank a bunch of water with caffeine Mio drops in it. I'd definitely recommend picnic tables for sleeping on- it's so nice to not have to stand up from the ground. My sleeping bag feels slightly damp from condensation, but everyone who didn't sleep under the pavilion has very wet sleeping bags. Pressure D, who came in late last night, leaves. Twinkle Toes heads out next, and I follow right behind after having to put on cold, wet socks. I was clever last night and washed both of my pairs.

My feet feel like frozen hamburger meat inside my shoes, and I hike fast to get blood pumping to them, back up the dirt road I took down from the trail last night. I can still clearly hear Karmel talking with a friend on the phone, which is weird since I'm well past the pavilion. The trail goes down and joins a road, and Karmel and Ram are walking along it, despite having left several minutes after me. I'm quite jealous of their little shortcut.

The plan is to hike to the Cajon Pass McDonald's for lunch and to hang out there for a couple of hours. I still feel very full from the pizza last night as I hike up to the top of the ridge- but when I start heading down, the hunger hits me. My stomach feels empty and I think about the food I'm going to be able to eat soon. I've never been to a McDonald's, so all I know for sure I'm ordering is a large chocolate shake.

It's very pretty, the trail bringing us through meadows of turning, purple grasses, and right under a power line. I'm hiking right ahead of Twinkle when the dirt bank on my left drops away and I'm hit by a view of multi-hued mountains stretching away, and blonde sand-colored cliffs falling away several hundred feet below us. Twinkle gets really excited when she realizes one of the mountains in the distance is Mt. Baldy, which she hikes often.

Then, we try to hurry to the pass. The highway comes into view, split lanes with pale semis floating along and glinting in the sun. It's so weird that there are so many cars on the road in the middle of a Thursday. Apparently LA is just behind Mt. Baldy and this is the main road to Las Vegas.

It's frustratingly close. The trail switchbacks down the hills and along ridges, until we enter a canyon with a trickling stream at the bottom. I watch for rattlers as it seems like prime habitat. I check the distance left to the Highway. "Half a mile!" I say to Twinkle, who's just walked up behind me. We move with renewed purpose down the trail.

Then we're at the road, with the sign pointing to the McDonald's. We walk down the road, the Golden Arches leading us onwards, the highway beside us spilling exhaust into the air.

I set my pack down with Mark the doctor and Buddha, who I met on the walk today. I try to find out what to order, staring at the TV screen menus that flash completely different menus every 3 seconds. "I'd like a large chocolate shake, first off," I say when I go up to order.

"Sorry, but our machine isn't working right now," he says.

"How stereotypical," I say, my heart sinking a bit. I have no idea what to get, so he helps me out. I order 2 egg mcmuffins without ham, two cheeseburgers without parties, fries, and a drink. It comes quickly and I dig in. Mark is amazed that I've never eaten McDonalds before. My grand junk food taste test continues...

We sit there for 4 hours, charging our phones and talking and updating various blogs and vlogs. We get a few strange looks from leggings-wearing LA folk, but a lot of people know about the trail or are friendly and curious. Claire comes in and says that Christine couldn't walk today on her bad knee and she had to hitch to Wrightwood from the picnic area. Karmel and Ram show up, and I see Sprite, Soulshine and Roadshow.

I head out last, after finally getting my shake and ordering an egg mcmuffin to pack out. I see Linus and tell him I've taken Picnic as my trail name, since he's the one who gave it to me. I tell him the story of the picnic cooler and he laughs and claps my shoulder. Then off I go! The trail takes a long dark underpass below the freeway, goes over and under railroad tracks, until finally we're up in the mountains and away from the slow-moving, never-ending necklace of semi-trucks.

The trail dilly-dallies along ridgtops, a view of the mountains around rising with it. It's probably the most gorgeous desert section so far. In the golden hour light, I walk through a shoulder-height field of whispering yellow grasses, through velvety green growth in a burnt section.

I pass by Twinkle setting up her tent and decide to head on in the hour or more of daylight left. Smog from LA smudges the horizon as I march down to the broad valley floor. There's a water cache by a dirt road and a bunch of people are camped here. I look at where this will put me out of Wrightwood tomorrow, and decide to stop here. A bird sits on a Yucca stalk and sings. I make a ramen for dinner and eat the egg mcmuffin I packed out- probably the least healthy dinner I've eaten in my life.

I set up camp in a sandy spot. Coyotes yip in the distance. The heat is coming back after the cold snap following the snow, and I'm planning on waking up before the sun tomorrow to avoid the heat during the long and steep climb into Wrightwood.

Pizza. Yummm. Always hungry.

Toilet seat.

A little surprise after looking up from my clay friends.

Clay creatures distracting me from the view of the lake.

Silverwood Lake Dam/outlet.

May 17th- Day 26- 14.4 miles from North Fork of Mojave River at mile 313.7 to Cleghorn Picnic Area at mile 328.1

Either Austin or Phil was coughing all night, and I had to put earplugs in to sleep. When I wake up, Johnny has already disappeared; she's an early riser.

I pack up, and walk across the creek with my shoes in my hand. After waiting for my feet to dry and putting something over my blister to keep my stinky/damp sock off of it, I'm the last one out.

The trail rises steadily above the creek, until it's on a sloping golden plain looking out over the entire valley. I sit and look at it, lovely golden-brown, marked by patches of pale-green fields, the enormous gravel mountain that is the Mojave Dam looming strangely in the middle. I pass a trailhead with a metal sign that says "don't trash your desert," the your emphasized, which makes me happy. I hate people treating the desert like it's ugly or disposable land, because the desert is beautiful and fragile and home.

The trail goes along the side of the valley, winding around. Where the folds of the hills are just right, I'm buffeted by wind so hard that I have to stagger and lean against it. I'm feeling unmotivated and tired today, my eyes heavy, although it might just be the wind sucking away my energy. I leapfrog Rambo and Seinfeld, as well as Karmel and Ram, the Israeli couple I camped with last night. Spider Bite, This Way, Galy, and Fred all pass by too. Eventually no one passes me anymore even as I'm going slow, and I feel like I'm all the way in the back, behind everyone, but I kind of don't mind. I stop for a while and watch a herd of horses run full-tilt across the valley floor. They look like those sculptures the size of a needle eye, but even from this far I can see their legs pumping, muscular and fluid. They stop running to drink water and I move on.

The trail goes through a weird industrial section and follows the side of a road. I sing Mariachi by Ani Difranco back-to-back, since my earphones died and it's the only song I know well enough to sing completely. It helps pass the time.

There's a cooler of trail magic that's empty now except for bottled water and some wine. I sit and read the trail register, where people wrote about all of the good things that were in the cooler, but I make 2 big tuna wraps with mayonnaise and barbecue sauce and other random things and don't mind. Karma and Nirvana were here two days ago, and Sprite, Soulshine, and Roadshow were here just yesterday.

The trail goes up, up, up. Soon I'm at the top of the hill and I'm so busy looking at two little smiling clay-sculpture people that I fail at first to see Silverwood Lake spread out before me. The trail follows the lake shore at a distance. I think a lot about the trail name of Picnic, and whether or not I like it. It's fine, but I'm not 100% sure yet. So many people know about it now, though.

There's a bunch of trash along this section, and I want to pick it up, but I don't have anything to carry it in and I'm on a mission to get to the picnic area in 3 miles, where I can order pizza. I see a big foam cooler down the side of a ravine, and decide to stop and carry it out; foam degrades badly, and it has a handle and it's light so it'll be super easy to carry. I swing my pack off, ease myself partway down the embankment, and hook my trekking pole on the handle to pull it up. I hoist myself back up onto the trail.

I carry the cooler in one hand and my trekking poles in the other. Suddenly it hits me that it must look like I'm going on a picnic. I laugh, and something clicks; I think I'm taking Picnic. The cooler has a big hole in the bottom, so I can't use it to carry other trash, but I enjoy the last few miles into the picnic area as I swing my little picnic cooler.

A ton of people are there, sleeping by a pavilion on their foam pads under the sun. They've all ordered pizza, and I don't have cash, so I'll have to wait for someone else to come so they can split the 30$ minimum order with me and pay me back. Twinkle Toes walks in maybe 15 minutes later, and I place a call for us for 2 large pizzas and a 2-liter soda. I thank the lady on the phone for delivering to us; she obviously knows who thru-hikers are and asks me how far I've walked today.

While we wait the hour for the pizza to come, I talk with a girl named Christine, who I mistook for Rainbow Snake when I sat with her at the zoo before Big Bear. Her hiking partner, Claire, is here too. Christine is still having knee issues, but not the same as when I met her. Karmel and Ram are here, too, and a guy named Andrew who looks like that one blue-eyed actor from that show that's super popular, Supernatural. Johnny comes up, and we offer her in on our pizza delivery. Johnny has decided not to take Johnny-On-The-Spot as her trail name, so she's Morgan now.

The pizza is delicious; Morgan and I split the vegetarian one and Twinkle gets the pepperoni. We talk late into the evening. We realize that the hole in the cooler I've been carrying is actually meant to make it a portable toilet seat, and we all howl with laughter. I'm glad they don't suggest the trail name of Porta-Potty. "I can't believe I packed out a toilet for three miles!" I say.

Morgan and Andrew head out, and Twinkle Toes, who I have nicknamed in my head Danger-Camp because she likes camping in illegal places, convinces us all to camp on the picnic tables at the pavilion, probably illegally- but, safety in numbers? A guy comes in in the dark and I introduce myself as Picnic for the first time. We all get in bed, turning our headlamps off as ranger trucks drive by to head home, just in case. I feel weird breaking the rules like this, but my picnic table is super nice and the night is warm. I write until my arm cramps and then I go to sleep. (I always feel like I'm breaking the fourth wall when I mention writing my blog posts every night, but hey, it's what's happening on the ranch).

Camp in the middle of the North Fork of the Mojave River.