Day 38

Trail miles: 21.9

Total: 500.1

Quick moment of silence for the hundreds of ants I have steps on in the last 500 miles. Seriously, they are everywhere on trail and it’s so hard to walk around them all. I wonder if it’s because hikers like me miss their mouth when stuffing them with crumbled Cheez It’s from the bottom of their pack. I wonder how long a Cheez It would feed a group of ants. 

The wake up call was at 4am to beat the heat. I took too long getting ready so I tried to catch up, but didn’t see anyone until around mile 7. The sunrise was so beautiful. I stopped to take a lot of GoPro and camera shots. I’ve decided the desert looks best before 8am and in the shadows. The sunset was pretty cool too. Definitely don’t take my camera out as much during the peak hours of the day. We got some trail magic cookies, which I rewarded myself with at the top of our big climb. About halfway up though was a cave you could climb into and walk around in! I wouldn’t camp there though, because you’d just be breathing in dust all night. Might be good for a siesta, but hard to get your pack through the hole. The spring was very slow so I fell way behind again filtering water. I caught up around mile 18 after I took a lunch break by myself because I was starving. It really makes you feel loads better after eating a real meal instead of snacking all day. And sitting too of course helps. Also playing Wordle when you have service, which we have somehow had everyday at one point or another. Not enough to use the internet most times, but enough to text. We were all in good spirits until we found out the water source was like a half mile off trail and through a field of grass to a cistern. It took us so long that Brad was ready to send a search party. It added on over an hour to our day. But we felt better after we hit mile 500!! We broke our permit qualifications, which say “minimum 500 continuous miles” so we are official! Camp is on the side of a parking lot with 9 other tramily members. We are all looking forward to burgers in Hikertown!