I decided to cowboy camp the prior night. Waking up to pee around 11:30, I see Sandman moving all of his camp like 20 feet. He walks back by and says, “there are ticks everywhere where I am sleeping”. Yeah, try sleeping after that. I turned my headlamp on scoured my campsite looking for ticks and didn’t find any. But still, I felt phantom ticks crawling all over me. 

Lo and behold, I awoke to 3 tick bites 

The morning was mostly a climb until reaching water 19 miles in. Those 19 miles were eventful, though. 

I witness a snake chase a mouse through the grass (the snake slithered fast but the mouse was faster). Then shortly after had the living daylight scared out of me by the largest rattlesnake I’ve seen yet. It startled me with its rattle. screamed in a high pitch voice, said a few choice words, and sprinted away. The snake was thick, about 2-3 inches in diameter. Then as I’m nearing the spring, I hear a loud rustle in the woods and stop to try to see what animal. Suddenly, a large cow stampedes onto the trail 10 ft in front of me and then full on gallops down the trail. 

My legs were tired today, so I was thrilled to arrive at the spring and chill for a few hours to wait for the day to cool down. 

My map set today switched from the section of ‘Southern California” to “Sierras”, bring about the end to the desert and a hello to the mountains. The final 7 miles to my next camp was stunning; a forest of pine trees providing shade and a welcome change of scenery. 

At camp, a group of hikers made a fire. I hung out with them and enjoying my first camp fire of the trip. Since my stove is broke, a nice hiker, Spotter, let me use his. 

I’m cowboy camping again tonight  with hopefully better results. As I go to close my eyes, I look up to send an endless line of satellites moving brightly through the sky, the result of Skynet from Elon Musk. The parade of satélites continued for a minute or two. One of the oddest experiences. Felt more sci-fi than real life. 

Miles: 26.1 

Total Miles: 823