Chap. 36 – Sleepy and still going

Let’s start shortly after midnight. We had seen the SpaceX Falcon 9 pass through the atmosphere and take orbit, we drank water from the tap and continued our walk along the road.

I kept calling everything “Pretty Princess _____” as we walked, especially the road. I’m wearing lip gloss and pink nail polish here because… well, why not? I used both in preparation for the aqueduct walk and one of the boys called me pretty princess. So the road became “My Pretty Princess Road,” and our breaks became “Pretty Princess Breaks,” and so on.

Finally, we reached the end of my Pretty Princess Road. It had been about 18 miles of road and pipeline, so even though I’m someone who loves to walk on the road, I felt ready to get back on the trail. I could feel new blisters forming, so I wrapped some leucotape around them and moved on. We still had about four miles uphill to camp, and I could see the beginning of dawn on the horizon. I felt like I was in a Minecraft world, with the light slowly coming in pixel by pixel. Near the top of the climb, the sun was bright enough to turn off our headlights.

I turned and admitted to Boostie that I was exhausted, and just by looking at him I realized that he was too. We feel exhausted. The night walk had been beautiful, fun, and worth it… but we needed sleep. As soon as we got to the water source at 6am, I pitched my tent on the ground under a couple of trees and the cowboy camped on top of it.

At 11 in the morning, I had been walking around for about half an hour and decided to get up. It wasn’t time to walk yet, that would have to wait until evening. Instead, I found my way to the stream and got my feet soaked. I grabbed my camp towel so I could wipe them down too. Despite wearing socks and shoes while walking (obviously), my toes become unpleasant at the end of each day. I spent the morning and afternoon under the shade of the tree, enjoying the cool breeze while I could.

Waking up with luminous paint still on.

Everyone else got up around 2 pm and we didn’t start walking until 5. Boostie and I planned to walk 17 miles to the highway to get to Tehachapi, but my calf started cramping badly around 9 miles in. I had to slow down significantly due to the pain, so we decided to camp in a stealthy spot and finish the other 8 miles in the morning. We’ll be up at 3am to finish the last 8 miles to the city, but at least tomorrow we can reset our sleep schedules in the city!

A beautiful sunset.

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