May 3

The last stretch of 50 miles is starting tomorrow. The plan is for roughly 20/20/10 mile days to Thursday, then catch a ride down to Highway 395 and catch the bus to Mammoth. Sadly that line only goes to Mammoth and not further north so will have to find a place to stay in Mammoth and continue on towards Tahoe the next morning.

The weather forecast is for very hot weather tomorrow and Wednesday for Ridgecrest but I’m hoping at elevation it’ll be cooler. I don’t see any wind advisories for now but that just means “normal” wind rather than hurricanes 😁

As with most rest days, there isn’t much to report about today. Lots of coffee, a trip to the grocery store (Laura let us use her car), laundry, a walk with the dogs (actually two; one by myself, one with all of us after dinner). great dinner and great conversations.

Laura is amazing … I can’t even remember all the details but she’s had about 30 foster children, has adopted no less than 6 of them (many with abuse issues), has given 11 Navajo girls a place to live, survived an abusive husband, works at the Legion cooking and also does all the work for hikers and the trail. Wow.

I even fell asleep in the afternoon; that doesn’t happen often.

Only a few days remain and then I have to figure out a way to get to the border! Maybe I should just keep hiking 😂 Let’s hope for less sand! Oh and the first water source tomorrow apparently has uranium in it so should be avoided. That means 16 miles instead of 12 miles to carry for!