Day 30 - fire station to Acton KOA

Phew. Longest day yet, and it felt like it.

The initial plan was to do two medium days into Agua Dulce. So 17 today, and something similar tomorrow. Last night was very windy, and one of my tent stakes took off before dawn (I found it later), but the tent held, and I slept fine. All through morning the wind continued, and it was rather cold. The trail went up along the ridge, half of it just bush walking, trying to avoid Poodle Dog Bush, and figuring out how to get over blow downs. It was terrible. We managed to miss the first campground, so we just sat on the trail and ate something for late breakfast.

On we went, though, and managed to find the second campground for lunch stop. We hid at the entrance to the outhouse to avoid the wind. It didn’t work.

We finally reached the Ranger Station quite early, and I got a soda, and filled up some water. It was only about 14:00, so Idan made me keep on hiking for the day. We had 8 more miles to the campground, and we limped away. I put on my music. It didn’t make me fly today, but it made those miles a bit better. We had a final stop just before the climb. I used the time to count all my new blisters. Very picturesque. Then there were 4 miles left, and even the climb wasn’t that bad, after I got over my initial hiker shuffle from after the break.

As we neared the road next to the campground, we were stopped by Coppertone, whose trail magic we missed back at the exit from Deep Creek. Well, we got our fix of Root Beer Floats this time, and then limped away into the campground. There are a lot of hikers gathered here. Most from last night, and many new ones. I just took an awesome shower, and am now relaxing on the grass just before making dinner.

Total today: 25.5 miles