Lenora and I spent the weekend in California City. We enjoyed Church and had some great Mexican food Saturday and good pizza on Sunday. Then on Monday it was back up to mile 602 which was about a 2 hour drive.

I realize I had forgotten to mention a couple things in my previous posts. First, I have received my trail name and it is Mr. Burns. “Just keep walking” decided that was my name because he thought I look somewhat like Mr. Burns on the Simpsons and also because I burned myself and had to go off trail for it to heal. So Mr. Burns it is. Second, back in Hiker Town I met a young man named Eugene Yoon who has an amazing story. Eugene has a friend that is paralyzed and he is walking the PCT to raise money to buy his fiend an amazing new medical machine that will help his friend to walk again. The medical device is a “ReWalk robotic Exoskeleton” and you can find out information about his here “I will walk”. The last time I saw Eugene was at mile 602 as he had to pick up his pace to get to Kennedy Meadows (mile 702) in time for an interview. Eugene was also fascinated that I was walking the trail and he frankly asked me how old I was. He is actually collecting a series of pictures of all the people on the trail that are over 60 and posting on facebook I think. The are a number of us “old people” that are on the trail and a number that are older and faster than myself. Anyway, go take a look at the I will walk site (link above). Perhaps you can help Eugene to help his friend to walk again. That would be a cool thing to do.

While at the water hole at mile 602 I had mentioned how surprised I was by the habitat and how I expected desert. Real “at least is a dry heat” desert. Hiker Ciervo proudly said how he had done this section from Tahachapi to Kennedy Meadows 5 times and that the forest habitat I was now in was how it was going to be all the way to Kennedy Meadows. What a relief…. out of the desert… Ciervo is either the biggest lier of all time or did not understand the question. After about 5 miles I meet PieuteMama who is a trail angel. The first thing she says to me is “…so are you prepared to go 43 miles without a water source”. Uh…. no, I say, should I be? She indicates we (there were two others with me: Fixie and Tonka) are about to descend into brutal desert, totally dry and without any cover, and there was no water. We all look at each other and indicate we had heard there were water caches at two spots in those 43 miles. She tells us in previous years that was true but not so this year because SHE was the one that maintained those caches and she was not doing it this year as she was without a car. So we all load up with water (8 liters for me) and prepare for the worst. Sure enough, not too far ahead we drop out of the trees and into the desert. It had been 105 degrees there that day but it was about 5 in the evening when I got to this point and the heat was not that bad. The water caches were suppose to be at mile 617 and 630. I keep walking until mile 617 because I really wanted to know if I needed to conserve the water by walking at night. Even with water I was not going to be walking during the day if it was over 100 degrees. There was water at 617!! Lots of it. So I immediately drank and refreshed about 3 liters of water. Still had the 8 liters as I was still not sure about the 630 water cache. Cowboy camped under the stars. Another great day and a great night. I did spend a bit of time wondering about both PiuteMama and Ciervo.