Day 8 (9 April) - Mile 68.4 - 79.37

Rodriquez Spur Truck Trail to Sandy Dry Creek Bed Campsite, CA

I should title this blog entry "How to carry 5 liters of water and still be thirsty all day."

The day started out great, except for the fact that we needed to carry extra water today since there was no definite water source during today's hike. There was talk of a water cache, but you can't really rely on them having any water left. So off we went carrying 5 liters (11 pounds) of water each. We stated hiking along a ridge overlooking a valley. We did have to somewhat conserve water since we had just enough to get us through the next two days. Conserve means that we are alloted 1 liter for every 4 miles. At first, this didn't seem to difficult, the sky was overcast, so the heat wasn't too bad.

Overcast skies while hiking above a valley.

Good shot of the trail along the ridge.

And then we started to decline down into the valley. Even though the sky remained overcast it got hotter and hotter as we got closer to the valley floor. This is what I thought we would be hiking through this whole time. This is the real desert. The desert with sand and rocks and cactus.

The desert...so hot.

We did come across some nice flauna:

So, we continue to walk and it continues to get hotter and we continue to get thirstier, but we have to stay to our water schedule. The only saving grace is that we know there is a rest area under a bridge at Scissors Crossing. We finally make it to the floor of the valley and we know we just have to make it to the road out there is the distance. This shouldn't be so hard. Especially since this is the first flat terrain we have seen since we left Campo on day one.

Flat terrain....Hot terrain.

As we walk we just think about that bridge. I looked at my thermometer and it read 90ish, but it felt hotter especially since we have all that water weight.

Are we there yet?!?

Finally, 5 hours later, with no stops whatsoever because we became "bridge blind" we see the oasis that we have been waiting for. .

Just get under that bridge.

What a surprise when we got under there. Check this out:

Water, couch, & garbage pails oasis.

Needless to say, we hung out there for 2 hours waiting for the day to cool down before hiking again.

Chillaxing in the shade.

We had the whole place to ourselves for 1.5 hours. Oh, we did share the shade with some wild turkeys.

Turkeys grabbing some shade.

By the time we were ready to leave, others finally showed up. I think at one point there were 7 of us under there.

Party in the shade with German couple and Papa Bear.

Then it was time to climb back out of the desert floor in the hills across from the ones we came down. We knew we had a 2.2 mile climb to a campsite where we planned on staying.  Climb, climb, climb, again conserving water since the next water source isn't until tomorrow night.

One cool thing about the climb is we saw the "oasis" getting further and further away.

Down under that road is paradise in the desert.

Also during this climb we saw some different cactus and landscape then what we saw coming down the other side.

Barrel cactus maybe?

Cactus with red blooms.

Desert landscape.

Finally, after 2.2 miles of climbing we came across what is described as "a campsite in a sandy, dry creek bed."  Of course it wasn't good enough for Tim, so he had to do some renovation before pitching the tent.

Tim trying to make it perfect.

Job well done!

Oh yeah, our trail names. You may now call us Mighty Mouse and Tom Cat.