Moving forward

Hello everyone!

Today is Monday and we are hopefully heading back out to the trail today. We've been at Hiker Heaven now for just over a week. It's been a wonderful place to rest. Jeff and Donna Saufley are extremely hospitable and generous souls. Garrett has become quite the chef cooking up all sorts of delicious meals and we've definitely caught up on any sleep deprivation that might have been lurking since our whirlwind departure from Delaware. We've seen a total of 38 hikers come and go since we've been here. But for the last day or so we've had the place to ourselves, another sign that we are definitely at the tail end of the thru-hiking pack.

After much deliberation here's our new plan: We will hike north out of Agua Dulce until we reach Canada....okay, so it's not THAT new. The "new" part of this is our decision not to skip up to Kennedy Meadows today to meet our friends and hike into the High Sierras with them. We talked to several different people about this and most of them agreed that walking into a 200-mile roadless, snowy stretch was not a good initiation back into the trail for me. The Sierras just got dumped with a fresh batch of snow to make matters worse. The better option is for us to push forward through the rest of the desert where we know we can find help if we need it and the trail will be more tame and what we're used to. It will be hard for me to adjust my balance to using just one trekking pole since my right arm will be in a sling. So the desert (including a ridiculously flat stretch of the Mojave) will be a good place to get use to the new way of hiking. We are sad to head out now seemingly alone as most of the other hikers have passed. But we've been assured by Donna that we're probably not the very last. If we can regain a good pace soon we'll be able to catch a few people. We'll need to keep a tight schedule from here on out if we want to reach Canada by the end of September when the snows can start falling.

My body is feeling stronger and we are getting restless as the days go by and we are not hiking. Time will tell once we get back on the trail as to how hiking long days will feel as my arm and body continue to heal. Our next stop is the town of Mojave, 100 miles away, and we hope to be there by next weekend. The whole time we've been here in Agua Dulce a strange weather event called June Gloom has covered the sky with clouds and temperatures didn't climb above 70. Ideal desert hiking weather! As our luck would have it, the sun came out yesterday and it looks like the heat may be returning just in time for our departure from the Saufley's guest house. The sunshine is pretty cheerful, I have to admit.

We now journey on, just as before, only 2 weeks behind. Thanks to everyone for their continued support!

bluebird