Thursday, May 17, 2012

Into The Vortex

May 13th, 2012
Day 43
Today's Miles: 23.7

This morning we took off from the Saufley's with a solid day of hiking ahead in order to reach Casa de Luna (the Anderson's) for our visit there. We climbed for the first few miles through sagebrush and began to feel the heat. But as we climbed, the views only got better.













As we reached the top of our opening climb of the day we immediately dove into intermittent oak forest on the other side. There, we were greeted by the tenth Rattlesnake of our trip. It was a baby, but one that looked like it had just eaten so it was very very slow to move off the trail.




Along the way we have been seeing little caterpillar nests all over and today seemed to be the day they were ready to break out.



These little guys were all over today!

We have started to see the water sources spreading out as we get closer and closer to the Mojave. So needless to say we were extremely excited when we came upon this cache of soda (both adult and regular) and water! All stocked by the Andersons!

YouTube Video











After leaving the Oasis cache we practically ran the last seven miles to San Francisquito road hopped up on Root Beer.



From the ridge just above the road looking back toward Green Valley, where the Andersons host hikers.

After getting to the road, we spent the next half hour or so hitching. Go figure the one car I didn't have my thumb out for is the one that stopped. After our ride dropped us off, we met up with Southern, Rubbs, Lucky Nalgene, Clay, Dream Laugher and Colonel who had all arrived earlier in the day.

Now, we've got our camp set up in the manzanita forest out back and are anxiously awaiting Taco Salad!

-Tailgate

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