Day 29

One of the most amazing aspects of a through hike is the fact that you walk many stretches of trail and experience areas that you would otherwise never even consider walking or seeing. Today I woke up with the sun on someone’s private property, walked a dirt road along an aqueduct and uphill into a wind farm. Then, with views of miles of solar panels and more wind turbines on the floor of the desert, I climbed 3500 feet off the floor only to descend two thirds of that to walk through and ultimately camp in another wind farm, this one next to the busy Tahachapi Willow Springs Road. Weird stuff.

I’m tired so I’ll just give the highlights and dump a bunch of photos at the end. I felt like Don Quixote in the wind farm field, pointing, taking photos, and thinking about how they work and the cost of our having harnessed the wind. We made it to our first water at 11:30. Here we ate a big lunch under the supervision of a watchful and well-fed squirrel.

We faced down the long climb after the water with very little issue, enjoying the huge gusts of wind and the changes in scenery and tread. The wildflowers are in bloom right now, so we had that to enjoy as well.

At the top of the climb we found water, manmade shade and chairs, and, magically, oranges. It was a delight. At this point I realized that the small rip in my pants had become, ahem, sizable.

The descent was easy into the second wind farm of the day was windy (duh) and not so pretty, but it was quite fun to watch the crows try to fly upwind for no apparent reason. They came as close as five feet to my head in their travails. We arrived at our campsite at Mile 558.2 too late to receive Legend’s spaghetti, but unfortunately it was not too late for him to join our dinner conversation uninvited. Conversation wasn’t too painful, but we were mostly too tired to be entertaining for him, so he did most of the talking… big day ahead, as I not only need to resupply but also get my ducks in a row for an early entry into the sierra, as I’ve decided to extend my trip for at least another week or two. Dear reader, get excited to see some snowy peaks!