Today's miles: 27
Total miles: 1819
Katie and I had breakfast this morning with Sagi and Lullaby before breaking camp. I walked on my own for most of the day, letting Katie get ahead of me. The trail traversed through trees for most of the day but occasionally went through burned sections or over mountain ridges with good views over the valley. It was very hot, even in the shade, and the mosquitoes were lazily annoying all morning.
We stopped at mile six with Sagi for a break, and then again at mile eleven with Sagi, Lullaby, Burrito Grande and a few new faces: Butters and Frank (Frank was actually his trail name - his real name was Gary). I find it fascinating how this late in the trail we can still be running into people we have never met. Even talking with Treekiller last week I realized he started the same day we did and has been hiking in the same circles as us the whole time, but we had never met him until recently. (We even discovered he was in the background of one of Sunshine's pictures from back in the desert near Ziggy and the Bear's!)
Water was very scarce through this section of trail. We were once again going through 15-20 mile sections between water sources. We were all lamenting about having to carry more water than usual, and in some ways it felt as though we were back in the desert. Southern Oregon is apparently notorious for being dry, so I can't wait to get to wetter sections again.
We stopped several times in the next few miles to take breaks and gather water at our last source for a while. Katie and I had an early dinner by a small creek with Lullaby, Butters, Burrito Grande and Sagi and then "tanked up" for the next stretch. It was already 5pm by then and we still had ten miles to go to make our goal for the day. I turned on Pride and Prejudice and cranked out the miles like a machine, losing myself in the book. By the end of the day I was feeling good but my feet were very tired. We made it to camp by 8:00 having done 27 miles for the day.