Hiker Heaven to Bouquet Canyon Road – 6-1

Elizabeth had a resupply package mailed to Hiker Heaven, and it was late. It had been sent 6 days ago, and was supposed to take 2-3 days.

Unfortunately, the Memorial Day weekend had produced more mail than the Agua Dulce mail system could handle – the mailman was just filling up his truck, and leaving the rest for later.

So we decided to stay in Hiker Heaven until the next mail truck arrived, that afternoon. In the meantime, we took the shuttle downtown to get a few errands done.

The first errand was breakfast. We tried the second of the three restaurants in Agua Dulce, and had a standard American breakfast. We ate with some of the hikers that we’d shared the shuttle pickup’s bed with. One of them had a lot of snow experience, and he convinced me that I should get Microspikes for the Sierras.

Next, we crossed the street to the grocery store, and bought our resupplies and some beer (a brown ale from Lost Coast, Downtown Brown).

On the shady front porch of the grocery store, we ran into Graham again. We shared the beer with him, and chatted (after figuring out how to use the floral metalwork in the patio furniture as a bottle opener). We learned that he had a trail name now: Sprout. It came from his practice of carrying a jar of mung beans in water. He waits for them to sprout, and then eats them.

From the shade of the porch, we watched it get hotter and hotter. It was pleasant drinking cool beer and hiding from the parching afternoon heat.

Except, I looked at my watch, and realized it was only 9 in the morning. We were all surprised by this. We’d gotten up, had breakfast, run errands, and were now hiding from what surely must be afternoon heat. Nope. The desert here feels like late afternoon heat when you’re barely done with breakfast.

We headed back to Hiker Heaven, and tried to fill the time until the mail arrived.

I searched the hiker boxes, and got a nice down jacket. It was lighter than my current jacket (but not as warm). I thought I’d give it a try, but kept my current jacket as a backup.

We had a leisurely day in Hiker Heaven. I split my time between working on this blog, and absorbing the atmosphere. Everything moved slowly. People sat on patio chairs, the lawn, or anywhere else there’s shade, while Credence Clearwater Revival played from a speaker hidden somewhere.

Eventually, the mail truck stopped by, and we found that Elizabeth’s package had been lost. So we set out, beginning our day of hiking around 5PM.

We ran into Sprout again, and hiked with him for a while. We learned that he used to work in Antarctica, improvising repairs for whatever mechanical systems broke.

It got quite late, and we had to turn on our head lamps. Something about a head lamp makes it hard to see the trail surface. It felt like all I could pay attention to was the huge bugs flickering through the light.

Our target for the night was Bear Spring, since we’d used up our water. But, it turned out to be running very slowly — maybe 10 minutes per liter — and there was a long line of people waiting for it. It could be hours before we got our turn.

I’d read a several-days-old report that there was a water cache about 2 miles ahead, just across Bouquet Canyon Springs Road. We decided to risk it, and head there instead of wait for the spring. If the cache was used up, we’d either have to turn around and come back, or go 13 more miles to the next water. So we headed on, quickly now, through a maze of creosote and moths fluttering through our headlights’ beams. Sprout decided to stay at the spring.

We were in luck, there was water at the cache. Not only that, but there was a campsite right behind the cache. We weren’t picky at that point, so we pitched our tents among the giant moths and alongside the highway noise, and went to sleep.