Day 3: Learning To Hike The Desert

May 13th, 2021

Mile marker: 72

Today’s miles hiked: 24

Yayyyyyyyyyyy!

I slept wonderfully last night. Our tent spot was up on a ridge which allowed the wind to blast through and make our spot nice and cold. I found myself able to stay warm in my sleeping bag just with shorts and a shirt but felt bad for Planner who was in a jacket, beanie, and gloves. 😬

We both naturally woke up at 5 again, unsure why we continuously do as neither of us woke up this early at home, but it has saved us. Instead of eating we packed up and headed out in the chilly temperatures with our jackets on. The trail led us to an amazing sunrise that kept getting better as the sun came up.

We kept our pace quick both knowing that we wanted to hike at least 12 miles until we took a break mid day.

We luckily came up to a working spigot in a picnic area and were relieved to sit down for a bit and refuel. Water has seemed to be provided by either a turned on spigot as such or by a cache some lovely person provides huge bottles of water at.

Planner and I have started to get a little bit more into our thru hiking selves and possibly a little bit grungier as we no longer care and know what to expect of a thru hike.

She also no longer cares that a public park has a restroom and pees next to the picnic table. Kid you not, I about died of laughter as I looked up and saw her squatting, complimenting how clear her pee looked. I then pointed to her the bathrooms literally 20 feet away. Thankfully, no one else was in the park but us and our madness.

I can’t get over the beauty this trail keeps providing. The sun and water situation suck but man oh man it really is special.

Today we met a few additional hikers who asked our names. “Planner and Brown Sugar” we responded and immediately some hikers assumed we had thru hiked before as most are still searching for theirs.

It has felt a little weird saying Brown Sugar again. It almost feels like I don’t own it yet as I am just getting back into the groove of things. Getting back to that thru hiker life. But I know I wouldn’t want any other trail name and sure as heck don’t want that “stress” of getting one.

Planner and I also have loved when people have assumed we have hiked before, we are unsure if it’s the smaller packs, trail names, or mileage but it makes us feel proud. Darn tootin it isn’t our first rodeo!

We ended up hiking 14 miles before we could siesta today because there was no shade to be found. We were along the top of the mountains, dying of thirst, waiting and waiting for a spot to appear. We eventually found a semi one and decided to put up Planner’s tarp as well for additional shade.

We then hunkered down for 3 hours to wait out the heat of the day. It felt weird at first and we felt a little antsy, but we both knew that if we got up and hiked we would be miserable again. So we laid down, cooled off, ate food, wrote a blog, talked, and napped. We headed back out at 4:30 we both had agreed that it was the perfect plan.

It is a weird hiking schedule but if it allows us to enjoy this desert more, We are totally about it. We felt refreshed and hiked on 8 more miles.

We ended up finding a nice camp spot lower down the mountain which made us both a little nervous about how hot it would be during the night, but we both knew it was time to stop hiking.

We spent the evening discussing how proud we were for ourselves as we kept shifting things to make them work for us and our needs. How fast we were learning to make the desert work for us. We may both love being in the forest more, but we are now starting to be able to enjoy the desert.

My eye lids can hardly stay open typing this so till the next post! 😴

Iz and Oz