We left Casa De Luna and hiked through a beautiful little stretch that was filled with wild flowers and hundreds of butterflies. It felt magical!

We hiked through a place called Hiker Town, where we had sent a package of food for our resupply. We were excited to get there because it’s set up to look like a town in an old western movie. It turned out to be a complete let down. It was dirty and trashy, and had an eerie vibe. Lingo had a bad interaction with one of the caretakers on site, which made us, along with six other hikers want to leave. We picked up our package, made dinner, and we all hiked out into the night.

This was the start of a whole new type of desert. We hiked along the California Aqueduct through the night. I heard stories from hikers who had previously done this section of the hike, that in years prior, hiking along the aqueduct was torture. They said they hiked during the day, and that the sun was scorching hot, which no shade, and that you heard the water rushing under ground below you, with no access to it. I’m glad we hiked during the night because it was nice and cool. When we decided to stop for the night it was close to midnight. The trail had turned into a dirt road, and it was hard to tell what was private land and what was okay to camp on. We had only stepped off the road for a few seconds when a truck came blaring by. “Turn off your headlamp!” Shouted Lingo. We dropped down behind some cactus so that we would not be seen. It was a little scary there, being so close to “town,” and not knowing who could drive by. We weren’t sure if we were on someone’s property, so we set our tent up in a less exposed spot, with Joshua trees and cactus around us.

The next morning we hiked on through the desert, and into a giant windmill farm. Windmills! Days and days of hiking among windmills! They are giant and fun to watch! These feelings lasted for about a day of hiking thru the windmills, before I realized I would be content if I never had to be near one again. I almost even deleted the photos of this section because it pains me to see the photos of the windmills.. I’m sure this feeling won’t last forever.

Water was tough to come by in this section. We had long, heavy water carries. It was also very hot, with little shade. We took lots of afternoon naps, and tried to get the most of our hiking done in the early morning and into the evening.

We exited the trail and hitched a ride into Tehachapi. Oh Tehachapi!