Wednesday, May 20th--Day 28

My hands are filthy. I was digging rocks out of the spot where I was going to put my tent, and the dirt coated my hands, turning them brownish gray.

I woke up last night, under the impression that I'd been hiking and had suddenly passed out. I sat up and hit the ceiling of my tent, and became confused. This is the second walking dream I've had out here. The first was that mountain lions were running down the trail after me, and I started yelling out in my sleep. A tent is a strange place to wake up suddenly, because there is no room to stand and jump out of bed. I think with the mountain lion dream I actually pulled my tent free of its pegs.

I'm not scared of mountain lions. Just, if you saw two of them running up at you from behind, you might freak out too.

Oh today. It was all up and down. Climb a mountain, climb down the other side to cross a highway, climb up another mountain. I did get very frustrated halfway up the second mountain, and sat for a while on the side of the trail, the wind making me cold. Then I lost my sunglasses, which made everything better. Also, I broke my camera somehow. The screen is cracked, so while I can still take pictures, I can't tell how they turn out. This is frustrating, because I saw two coyotes today, one when I emerged from my tent this morning, and one where we set up camp tonight.

Coyotes are awesome. They look at you for a while while you look back at them, and then they trot silently away.

Right. Well. Despite all the climbing today (we reached 9,300 feet at one point), we managed to squeeze out 22 miles before dark. Two of those were along a highway on a detour because a portion of the trail is closed, so as not to disturb the endangered yellow legged mountain frog.

Ok whatever.

Gotta get some sleep. Another day of unnecessary climbing tomorrow. Couldn't just wind the trail around the mountains, no. Had to build it over every single one of them. G'night.