Tuesday, June 9th-Day 48

I think I must have celebrated a little too hard last night, because I woke up hungover. The general aches of a hangover are bad enough, and sleeping on the ground does not make them better.

We spent today reading and hanging out. I haven't been able to get a cell phone signal since we left Mojave a week ago, and the inability to contact family and friends is making me antsy. I finally broke down and called my aunt collect on a payphone, the only phone around. She is a fantastic lady, and it was great to talk to her.

The clouds had been building up in a far corner of the sky all day, and a deep, rolling thunderclap issued from far off in the mountains. We loaded everything under our vestibules and got into our tents just as the rain started. I'd never been in my tent in the rain before, but I lay there reading, my sleeping bag bunched up under me as a pillow, and I felt safe and secure. I fell asleep listening to the drops hit my rain fly, and had strange, vivid dreams about driving home to see my family. I woke up to bright sunlight and a suffocating heat. The Green Shark handles rain like a champ, but in the sun it becomes an oven. I stumbled out into the sunshine and cooler air, and went over to the store to check the hiker boxes and read some more.

Hiker boxes are boxes that hikers deposit unwanted items into. Much of the time, they're full of old shoes, tampons, bottles with a smallish amount of sunblock in them, bags containing mysterious foods, books, and other items. Sometimes, they carry treasure. In my case, this usually means food. Bags of cookies, packs of crackers, snack bars. Someone last night put in an unopened container of frosting, but I got there too late. Obviously, the best time to check a hiker box is right after someone dumps all their stuff into it. This trip has turned me into a scavenger. Eating a free pack of Ritz crackers is a better option than paying five dollars for a bag of Oreos in the store. In this way, me becoming something of an animal is maybe defensible.

It's not just the hiker boxes. Anytime free food is offered out here, I'm all over it. I'm like a dog. Also I go to the bathroom outside, which doesn't help the comparison. There's a lot to do tomorrow before we leave. I'd better get some sleep. 'Night!