Well I just sweet talked my way into obtaining a miniature bottle of conditioner, so that was nice. I’m into free stuff, and conditioning my hair is one luxury I’ve gone without since I started the trail. I’ve been hiking just over a month now and after some serious miles the last few days, I’m taking 2 full days off at a Motel 6 in Mojave. It’s been a good decision; this place has a pool, it’s across the street from a super cheap diner(Primo Burger) and it’s only $36 a night so with 4 to a room that’s a rather inexpensive stay. Plus, trail angel ‘Jetta Blue’ has been helping us out with rides wherever we need to go and a BBQ on for us last night. Hopefully I’ll be making a trip over to Tehachapi today to run a few errands and check it out, the town sounds pretty cool. This area is all about trains and wind turbines. In fact it’s supposedly one of the biggest wind farms in the world, you should google it. I even walked by a bunch of GE turbines, so that was cool.

Since I left the Andersons I covered some serious ground. I did a 38 mile day(my all time personal backpacking record)and followed that with a couple 25 mile days or something like that. It’s been awesome. Because of a closed section of trail we had to do about 13 miles of street walking but besides that the trail continues to amaze me. I did a nice long downhill into the desert and then walked along a really cool aqueduct. A bunch of people with motor homes and dirt bikes made us sandwiches and gave us drinks at ‘the tiki bar in hell’ before we hiked back up into some mountains and through about a million wind turbines. Because of a little extra hustle I put myself a day ahead of my loose schedule so I feel like I deserved the double zero and earned it and all that. Apparently we’ve got quite an intense stretch when we hike out of here. It’s something like 140 miles to my next stop, Kennedy Meadows, and it’ll be super hot. So I’ll be carrying 7 days of food and lots of water. This will be the heaviest my pack has been and will likely slow me down a bit. I do, however, have a brand new pair of shoes so that will counterbalance the extra challenges that I’m about to face. I did 566 miles on my first pair and probably could have got a little more out of them but wasn’t taking any chances. I went with Brooks Cascadia’s 9’s size 11 opposed to size 10’s that I wear in the real world. I’ve been pretty happy with the Cascadia 9’s and everybody that’s been wearing the Cascadia 10’s is having major sneaker problems. I apologize for the boring gear talk but I highly recommend these sneakers.

Everything else has been on the up and up. I’ve been hiking with the same group of people for awhile now and I feel like we’re moving pretty well. We are starting to come across a lot of new hikers that were a little ahead of us. Knock on wood but right now my body is feeling like a well oiled machine. I’m still eating like a champion and despite all the walking I’m keeping my weight up. I did some laundry here and I’m as clean as I’ve been since mid April. If any of you have any questions feel free to fire away and also if you’d like to follow me on the gram I just changed my name on there to  @endlesspsummer.