Carowack: 6/5 Agua Dulce to Mojave

This was a very different week. I hiked out of Agua Dulce and had a few days of really nice cowboy camping and cooler weather. I made a pact with my feet as I walked away, that I would massage them, elevate them, and provide them with adequate dosages of Vitamin I (ibuprofen) if they would carry me only as far as Mojave, where my new shoes were waiting. Their response was muddled, but I decided to assume that they had begrudgingly agreed.

Sunrise from a cowboy camping spot on a ridge

I walked slowly and mostly at night. It was pretty enjoyable. I enjoyed a day of rest at a trail angel haven called Casa de Luna, hanging out with the hiker trash. The next morning, a friend of the hikers, a very expressive Russian named Vlad, drove up and yelled, "Who wants to go to Malibu?!"

I raised my hand, and before I knew it, I was crammed in the back of his Explorer and me and three other hikers were on our way to the Pacific Ocean!

It wasn't your typical California beach scene. It was cold, windy, a little stormy. The beach was flecked with small chunks of crude oil and feathers from an oil spill in Santa Barbara the week before. It was sobering, but we still enjoyed ourselves. I did yoga on the beach to stretch out my muscles and relax.

Solid crude oil deposits

It stains your feet when you walk on it

Pit stop on the drive back for some California strawberries!!!

Despite my efforts to go easy on my feet, particularly my left foot which would twinge painfully in warning a few times every day, when it came time to leave Casa de Luna I felt it would be dangerous for me to hike long miles for the next few days. There was a 12 mile road walk detour coming up, and I had no intention of dragging my feet along that unforgiving surface in the hot desert sun. Instead of risking it, I jumped on a ride up to a place called Hikertown, just past the road walk.

Hikertown was strange. It was like walking onto the set of an extremely low budget old western film that was abandoned, resumed again about 10 years later, abandoned again, reopened as a historical tourist attraction about low budget old western filmmaking, and finally deserted due to lack of interest and profitability before coming into the realm of hikers. The whole place consisted of a house, garage, an array of sheds and trailers decorated to look like the wild wild west, chickens, and every fly in the Mojave desert. It was magical. The manager was kind and accommodating, and said things like "If you catch a chicken, I'll kill it and roast it for ya, but try to make it one of the roosters." In his defence, they do crow an awful lot. I spent my time there sleeping on a rusty old truck bed, hiding from the sun under the one tree, and watching cock fights erupt spontaneously.

Needless to say, though I enjoyed the extra rest and entertainment, I was happy to finally hike out and be back on the trail for real. I hiked out with a few other hikers and we headed down the aqueduct and into the night. It was a full moon, so it was bright enough that we didn't need headlamps. We walked into wind farm country. Huge turbines towered over us as we walked under their silhouettes. The wind picked up too, for some reason...

The aqueduct!

Hiking by the full moon, through the Joshua trees

And then the wind really picked up. I was hiking with a guy named Coyote, and the two of us hiked 22 miles in hurricane speed winds. The wind came from every direction, and it knocked us about constantly, whistling about our heads and trying to catch our packs behind us and send us flying off the mountain. It was kind of scary actually, trying to balance on a ridge in the wind under the moonlit shadows of wind turbines. The cliff was pretty sheer, so we had to hike until almost 2 AM before we found a spot that was decent enough to camp, a little gully tucked down in the sage brush a few feet below the trail. It was cramped and we kept sliding down the hill in our sleep, but we woke up to an easy mile into town and an awesome view.