Jammin' with Jameson

17.5 miles. We had the pleasure of cowboy camping and sleeping in until 7 for an easy 3 mile downhill hike to the road to Montezuma market. We passed mile marker 100 and officially were on our way to checking off huge chunks of the trail. I let the rest of the group go resupply, while Prophet read another bible verse for us. I walked with Prophet, Carter, and Nathan through the flat parts of desert wasteland that reminded me of Arrakis. There was only wheat strands and cows everywhere. My creativity muscles were firing and I became the name matchmaker for the day. We did an official naming ceremony for Carter to be Polar for his original 1973 polaroid that he’s carrying and Nathan Pokedex for his encyclopedic knowledge of all vegetation and his attempt to catch em all by looking up the plants he doesn’t know. We got to Eagle Rock which I thought was a pretty shitty name for such a poor similarity only to have the Germans pass by and tell us that the view was from the other side… I’m a dummy. We slogged through to Warner Springs as it started getting really hot which worried me because it wasn’t even the heat wave we were expecting over the next few days. I tried to hitch to the post office to no luck. We enjoyed all the food we got until we had to put all the weight on our backs again. All the hikers hung out at the picnic tables by the gas station and I lost it hard. I became tired and couldn’t really rest so I was just pooped. We all ended up heading to the community center for bucket showers and bucket laundry – what a joy! It was so nice having cold water all over my body again. I still felt really tired and not as social as usual but had a nice game playing cards with the Germans. We left together around 5 to finish off the day and had some quick moving miles with lots of conversation. We descended into a valley that was our first pure oasis we’ve seen all trail and the first natural water source passed in a while. The entire trail was sandy and reminded Spiget of a volcanic island in Greece that he had spent a lot of time on. I pushed on with Swell, Prophet, and Josh only to hear their crazy plan about 4 more miles in the dark and a 4:30 wake up so I quickly bailed once we passed Tuna another half mile up the creek. We did lots of stretching and I applied new KT tape to try to relieve some of the pain in my ankles. My body feels fine but my feet are too tired to move very fast; we’ll see how the next few days of early morning and night hiking goes to avoid the midday heat waves.