Same procedure as every day, as I got out of my tent at 6h30, mine was the only one still standing.

 

Just after 7h00 I left for the 14 mile waterless strech before I would get to the McDonalds at the Cajon junction.

 

The first few miles were uphill again to get out of the valley of the lake where the famous camping spot is.

 

 

When you have this specific goal in mind, which is close but still 6hours of hiking away from you, time isn’t passing fast.

 

 

Not a lot of pauses were made because the plan was to stay a few hours at McDonalds and eat as much as possible there 🙂

 

When I arrived there, I saw a lot of familiar faces inviting me to have a seat. There is some kind of designated hiker area, a bit away from the rest of the restaurant and next to the toilet to not bother other guest with our smell.

 

 

The dessert, 800kcal of pure happiness 🙂

 

After 3,5 hours of charging phones and eating I took 7 liters of water with me and a liter of coke for the way. Refills are free, so I drank 3 liters of coke that day and my belly felt exacly that way. Hiking and so much coke don’t go well together and I had to burp for 2 hours before it stared to get better…

 

 

Railroadpassing before the mountains started, 28 miles uphill without water.

 

 

Even though I had this long pause at McDonalds I still hiked 19 miles that day.

 

The night was short because it was windy and it rained a bit. Which was in fact not that bad because I was prepared to hike in the heat the whole day but didn’t had to because the clouds were so low that it took me 6 hours to break through them.

 

 

This was wat the first 13 miles looked like, mist, only mist. At least it was cold and I didn’t need that much water. Even with the cold temparatures the climb was exhausting, 16 mile uphill in total and about 5000 feet of elevation gain.

 

But as you might expect, the views were amazing as soon as we broke through the clouds.

 

 

The 22 mile day was long and we ended up beeing at the road to Wrightwood just before 19h00. We heard that Wrightwood is the most hikerfriendly town on the trail and it took us literally not even a second before we would realize that this was true.

 

We haven’t even set a foot on the parking lot next to the street as a car slows down to ask if we needed a ride to town. Even tough there was not enough space for the two of us, they squeezed together and we had the same talk as everytime while hitchhiking. When we started, if we really want to go to Canada, that this is amazing, how hard it must be without water for such a long stretch,…  same questions but its always a pleasure to hear that people admire and respect the crazyness of the hikers 🙂

 

They drove us right in front of our motel where Manuel and Woody waited for us. I took a quick 10 minut shower and then we got to Tacomonday night at a local Restaurant.

 

Same here, everyone is super hikerfriendly. There were Maria, Matt, Brice, Christina who are doing the Yoga on trail which I haven’t seen in a while waiving at us to sit next to them.

 

 

Nacos, tacos, 4 beer a coke and a rum later I was saturated and happy 🙂

 

Hiker midnight has been long ago so we got to bed at 21h30. Hiker midnight is 20h00, because its rarely that we are awake after this point, everyone goes early to bed because the lack of sleep is always present.

 

Tomorrow I have to get a 5 day resupply to get to Agua Dulce and I have to get my new sleeping quilt. I’ll hike out of town in the afternoon and camp on the mount Baden-powell.