It’s fun to be at the end of a long, successful, day.

Last night I learned the hard way that I can’t cook the Outdoor Herbivore meal in their bags. All I got was some hard wet pasta, and threw it away. This morning I discovered that their cold breakfasts do work in the bag, but are just not tasty. I’ll stick with Knorr meals and Quaker Oatmeal breakfasts from now on. #Fail.

Monty made a huge breakfast for everyone, including omelets with spinach, cheese and tomatoes, hash browns and toasts. It was almost too much. We got a ride back to the community center, and met all the hikers from last night, who were just getting breakfast themselves. Idan found out he forgot his hat at Monty’s, so I hang around until he made another round trip to his house. It wasn’t there, and was later found at the community center, having spent the night on the table there. We finally headed out at 9:20, and started to cross the valley. After the 2nd road crossing we started zip zagging up along the Agua Cliente stream, crossing it several times, and climbing up. The original plan was to hike 14 miles, to a dry campsite, so we had to fill up our water at some off trail spring. But when we got to its trail head we decided we’d just push to 17 miles and reach Trail Angel Mike’ place.

We woke up in the morning to the sounds of rain drops on our tents. That was a nice change. It only lasted for a few minutes, and dried out by the time we got outside. But there is rain in the desert! By the time we left the campsite everyone else were already gone. We had a nice breakfast (especially after last night rice fiasco) and packed up our stuff.

Phew, today was a long day.