Night Hike - Tuesday, May 27

We are surrounded by desert. Sage, chaparral, manzanita, horned lizards, tarantulas. Desert.

Hidden behind the walls of the Saufley's with their abundant water and wonderful shade trees it is not quite so omnipresent, but the temperature and hot sun are niggling reminders it is there.

We slept in this morning. Our tent was pitched just west of a garden shed which kept the sun off until nearly 9:30. The resulting coolness let us sleep until nearly 8 undisturbed. We noticed that nearly half of the 50 inhabitants had left in the early hours of the morning in their bid to make some milage up the trail before the sun baked them. We had plans to leave today, but not until the late afternoon when the temperatures had dropped out of the nineties and into the lower eighties. This meant we had a day to spend.

We packed our packs and vacated our tent site in case new arrivals needed it and joined some conversations up near the house.

Sally decided she would join the field trip to REI at 1:00 in search of a pair of sandals to wear at stream crossing and as auxiliary foot ware while in camp. She also did not want to spend another day in the desert heat so the call of an air conditioned van and air conditioned store was loud and clear. While she was gone I made a couple bike trips to town for pop and ice cream, visited and wrote for the blog.

Her trip was delayed a bit, returning at 5 instead of the projected 4. She brought me an In & Out Burger and Fries which I quickly devoured. She had asked the van driver if he would run us to the trailhead about three miles away. He agreed, then moved the departure time to just ten minutes and announced it to all with a megaphone. Luckily, we had all in readiness, but we still had to scramble to get into the van with all our gear. We did have time to get a picture with Donna Saufley, although I lost a gaiter in the shuffle.

He made a first stop in town to drop dinner goers at the local restaurants, then drove us out to the trail head, a dirt power line road just outside of town. The temperature was in the mid to upper eighties as we put our packs together and prepared to hike. It was 6:30.

The trail started up hill for about 1800' over the next 6 miles. About 2/3rds of the way darkness fell after a glorious sunset. Undeterred, we donned headlamps and continued on our way. We were soon passed by six kids we had spent time with at Saufley's, Tink, Bisquit, Digeredo 2, Moonshine and two others. They stopped at the top of the ridge to camp among the grasses anticipating a great mountain top sunrise. Sally and I continued down into Bouquet Canyon three miles below near a water cache reportedly with 30 gallons of water.

We arrived about 12:30 in the morning, had the tent up and were asleep by 1:00. We set an alarm to wake us at 4:30 so we could make more miles before the heat of the day pinned us in the shade. Our objective was another trail angel house, Casa de Luna, 24 miles past the Saufley's, owned and run by the Anderson Family.