We soaked up all the amenities this ranch has to offer for much of the day today. That included a nice breakfast of waffles and eggs, drinking 3 sodas for me, taking a dip in the pool, mindlessly browsing the Internet, eating burgers for lunch, taking a secret second shower for Wolf Bird, and buying some food/snacks to hold us over until our next town stop. I don’t even want to count how many items on that list revolve around food.
This has been a nice stop for us. It was really refreshing to see Rise and Shine and Snakebite yesterday and also nice to meet and hang out a bit with some other people heading south. Yote and Two Point Two are having some shoe issues and are awaiting new shoes at the post office in town here. Unfortunately the shoes didn’t come this morning so they decided to take a zero in hopes of the shoes arriving tomorrow. Wolf Bird and I are setting out without them but hoping to see them in our next town in a few days.
We finally pulled ourselves away from the luxuries here and hiked out around 3pm. Just in time for the hottest part of the day! We are hiking part of Hat Creek Rim, a notoriously waterless and hot/exposed section of trail. In reality, it’s not all that more extreme or different from much of the desert (of which we’ve already hiked 700 miles) and the longest waterless section is only something like 16 miles.
Our first few miles were pleasant and we walked along a little pond with many Canadian geese and Pelicans in it. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a pelican in real life before! But now I have.
We filled up on water for 13 miles and I carried a bit less than I would’ve in the desert and immediately started questioning if I’d packed enough. It was very warm and the sun was still pretty high in the sky and I was already feeling thirsty. Of course, the trail provides, and after a few miles we came across a dirt road where a kind soul had stocked some water for us hikers. I of course filled up and vowed to carry more water next time.
We eventually climbed about 300-500 feet and started walking along the edge of a steep drop off. I forget how this geological feature formed, but we were basically walking along the edge of a giant plateau of land that looked over a vast flat area below us. It was beautiful, with a snow capped Mt Lassen visible in the distance.
Luckily it grew cooler as the afternoon turned to evening. Wolf Bird and I were both feeling pretty tired for the last few miles and were glad to arrive at camp around 815. Although my positive feelings disappeared quite quickly upon seeing a bunch of cows in the area! My arch enemies. I was not excited to camp where cows were hanging out, but Wolf Bird found a nice spot for our tent that was surrounded by trees and bushes and would be hard for cows to get near. Plus other people were camped nearby and I secretly hoped they’d be the victims of a cow incident rather than me.
There was a big water tank here that someone kindly refills so we got some water from there and ate our burgers we packed out from the ranch. It was later than usual so we were quick to hop into the tent and head to bed. As we laid down to go to sleep we kept hearing the drawn out and angry sounding moos from the cows in the area. Before I went to sleep, I made Wolf Bird promise that if any cows came in the night he’d scare them away for me.
You had me laughing about the cows…love u big
stay safe