Day 31

Mile 562.0 to mile 566.5

PCT Miles: 4.5 (7.2km)

Total Miles: 566.5 (906.4km)

I woke up this morning under an impressive wind gust. My tent was shaking but thankfully it held up very well. Time to pack and walk the last 5 miles to town! It’s a Nearo!

I had left in my food bag only two cliff bars and I had no water. It’s so much more comfortable hiking with less weight. You feel like you’re flying 🕊️!

When I arrived at the highway 🛣️ that brings you to Tehachapi, I had no idea 🤷 what to do. Obviously I couldn’t try to hitch on the highway, so I sat on an area that seemed that cars could stop and tried to text trail angels from a list that I had seen a few miles back.

After 20 minutes or so, this truck comes from

Tehachapi, stops close to where I was and drops off two PCT hikers. I asked hey are you going back to Tehachapi? The driver replied yeah, I sure am! Can you give me a ride? Of course!

Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the driver. Before going to Tehachapi he had to stop at the “Dump” which is a crazy humongous place where people dump absolutely all kinds of trash. He had some bags of grass from his lawn mowing that needed to be dumped there.

After that he dropped me at Walmart and refused to take any money for gas. I was coming this way already, he said. Awesome! It was not even 10am and I was already in town. Time to start resupplying!

Walmart was 15 minutes walk from the hotel that I chose to spend the night (the one with free warm breakfast). So after buying 80% of my resupply for the next seven days, I came to the hotel and chilled there (while recharging all my electronics which for the first time in this trip were all depleted). At 12:00 I had lavash wrap 🌯 and fries 🍟 and a delicious baklava from a mediterranean restaurant close by. I could check in early at the hotel at 13:00 and could finally take a shower 🧼!

The rest of the day was divided into doing the usual town duties: laundry (even though I believe my yellow sun hoodie will never look not dirty again. The picture is after it was washed!), duct taping my tent, food bag and my shorts 🩳 (hopefully it will work better than my stitches 🪡), going to the sports shop to buy more food and back to walmart once more to buy vegetables for dinner and other resupply items like toothpaste and tissues.

Tomorrow I start my last stretch in the desert 🌵! I’m hoping to hike the next 140 miles in seven days 🤞.