Figure 8:

I had the best intentions of sleeping late since we didn’t need to be up early to hike and beat the heat. Plus, I thought sleeping on a full belly it would be impossible to get me out of my sleeping bag. Nope, instead I was up at 6:30 and in the rec room making coffee before 8. Daddie Gizmo was snoring away until I got a text that said “Is there coffee?”  Killing time while he slowly woke up I called my dad and got to catch up which was really nice. He loves the blog and is glad Daddie G and I are keeping in touch as much as we are. I expressed to him that I am nervous and scared for the Sierras coming up, but that we are heading in and going to do it until we feel it’s too dangerous. My hope, obviously, is to make it all the way through, but this is a very unusual and risky year with 200% above average snowfall. The creek crossings become very dangerous with the snow melt.

We had planned to go to Ridgecrest today to stay with a trail angel, but we really like this campground and ordered all our snow gear online and had it shipped to Dave and Dale who are meeting us in Kennedy Meadows Wednesday (yay!) so we don’t need the local sporting goods store there any longer.

Rob trimmed his beard 😮😮

Instead, we grilled yummy sausages and took the bus to Kernville which we heard is a cute town wih views of the mountains and on the Kern river with a local brewery.  I scored huge in town when I found new Teva sandals on sale in a local store! I had JUST ordered these same shoes online that morning for $10 more so I cancelled it and had shoes to wear. I wore my broken Tevas into Kernville because I had no other option but had a feeling that there was a very good chance they would completely break during that day and I would be walking around barefoot. They were already a few years old and I knew the trail would be their last moment in my life. Great timing on the shoes!  The brewery was fantastic. Really good beers. We shared 2 bottles of Russian Stout that was possibly the best beer I have ever had. I’m not a huge beer drinker, but I loved this – Igor Unchained. We stopped by the local pizza joint after and made massive salads from the salad bar while we waited for our pizza to cook. It felt so good to eat all those fresh veggies 😊 And the pizza was good too. We took half back with us on the bus to the campground. We could see how fast the river was running and how high it was on our ride back. I couldn’t help but think that this (and worse) is what we will be trying to cross through in the Sierras. How????!! Geesh, we have a wild chapter coming up. Back at the campground, we took another delightful shower, ate more pizza and watched a pretty bad movie. Great night though. We were exhausted and tucked in by 10:30.