I wake up to a beautiful morning. I am camping right by a stream and so I fill up my water containers and add the purifying drops. The water always looks so amazingly clean, I wonder if I can’t just drink it straight. But I always purify or filter. There are hikers at the other extreme. I met a guy named “Rat water” and he got his name because he never purified his water unless it was very obviously necessary. Supposedly once drank water straight that was reported to have had a dead rat in it. I have not seen this guy since I met him and found out the story of his name. Perhaps he is in a hospital somewhere…. Just kidding… I hope not.

There are a couple little flowers where I am camping and I start the day by taking their picture.

Here are some pictures of the start of the day hiking.

For the most part this is another rather gentle ascent. Only the last part gets a bit steep. Here is a picture looking down on the way up. This should look rather familiar to you and the tundra look with lots of streams going between lakes seems to be common on the South side of a pass. The north side is always more rocky and dry.

Once I reach the top of Donahue Pass and look to the North I can see the wonderful valley into which I am going. Meadow after meadow of wonderful flat hiking.

I have a decision to make about the point I took the picture of the deer below. There is no camping within about 6 miles of Tuolumne Meadows and so I need to decide if I want to camp or go another 6 miles and spend the night in a hotel with Lenora. OK…. not a hard decision!! I decide to push on and text Lenora with the InReach indicating I will be there tonight between 6 or 7. I actually go a little faster and get to Tuolumne around 5:30. There is a great general store there and I walk into the store and while waiting for the register line to go down, I sit down in a corner of the store and drink a Gatorade and a double chocolate milk and then realize my money is out in my pack. I put the bottles in a safe place and go get my money. The gal at the cash register was amused when I gave her two bottles and indicated I drank them while waiting.

A 16 mile day is not bad considering I stopped many places along the way and just enjoyed the view, the sounds of birds, the sounds of water and just realizing how lucky I am.

I found out in Utah that my blood pressure had gone sky high. I was really surprised because after losing so much weight and feeling great I did not expect a higher blood pressure but a lower one. It was about 160 over 100. Those numbers are not good. I am on blood pressure medication and so I called my doctor and she told me to double the dose. If it does not go down, I will be off the trail until the reason can be found.

As of writing this post (Sunday) my blood pressure has gone down to 140 over 80. Will keep checking but will probably keep hiking AND schedule a complete physical with my doctor and go off trail when that can take place.

Lenora’s Note:
Don making great time to be at pick up point today. Unfortunately I ignored Apple a little too long and finally got locked out of my account because I had not updated my password. It took hours of phone calls that resulted in my leaving late to fetch him from Tuolumne Meadows but we still had part of the evening together.
I am in worried wife mode now because of the blood pressure so I am determined that he get checked out asap. On the weekend I completed another of my ‘unfinished’ projects.

Lenora July 18:
Since I’m not hiking I get to add notes for the 0 days, days Don makes no progress on the trail because he is with me. These are great days. Today we took a long drive over miles of dirt road to the ghost town of Bodie. It was a gold mine town and is a popular tourist spot. So popular they ran out of parking and after a long wait we decided looking at the town from the road below was enough and headed back to town for lunch. As we drove I noticed how sparce the vegetation is at this high elevation but from high on the mountain you can see part of Mono Lake. We saw lots of sage brush, cedar and juniper but little else.

July 19 (The Lords Day)
Infant of Prague church is both tiny and delightful. Fr. Jorge Romano gives a very good homily that stressed resting on the Lord’s Day and family. Today I finished the Leaf Collage needlepoint and worked on blogs. A good day of rest for us.

July 20, (Monday)
Another 0 day since we are hoping for a call back from the doctor’s office about Don’s BP and need for a physical. Stitching Day for me. New car carrier arrived as zipper broke on the Utah trip and everything inside got soaked in the rain. We got it put on car and loaded and think it will be much better solution for our needs. Don ready to hike tomorrow but still waiting on call from doctor.

July 21, (Tuesday)
Another 0 day. Waiting for doctors office to call we went for a ride and found we had cell service by resevoir so watched birds for a while. Of course we missed the doctor’s call and so we are trying again to get appointment. Blood Pressure seems to be improving so all may be ok.