I don’t like to brag, but I won the race to get ready this morning. I was the first all packed up and ready to go, but I don’t want to rub anyone’s nose in it (for example; Ivy, Wolf, or Bunny who all lost). Any other day, I’d say it wasn’t a race, but those are the days I lose. I really miss having Bear and Sassy around in the mornings (we hiked with them on the AT last year). We could always count on them being a few minutes behind, especially since it seemed like one of them lost some article of underwear on a nightly basis—frisky kids!
How did we make the amazing transition from last to first in just a single night? We set an alarm for 20 minutes before Ivy sets hers so I would already have the coffee in play when she started moving around. It also helped that Wolf had a ride arranged for us at 2p this afternoon when we only have 8 miles to walk. Even though they are both ex-military and driven by the “hurry up and wait” mentality, we were counting on them slacking off a bit this morning. The rest, is history in the making. We will not push the issue and go back to our normal un-rushed, it’s not a race mentality the next day we hike.
The four of us hiked out of camp together. I was hoping there might be a port-o-potty in the parking lot which also helped reduce our prep time this morning. There was one sitting there beckoning with a “come hither” look. I was ecstatic until I realized the trail didn’t run through the parking lot. No one was willing to make the detour with me to partake, so I had no alternative other than to wave and think of things that might have been. Slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination the more you slip sliding away.
We walked the entire 8 miles through the wind farm. It was even bigger than I thought as it was spread out over and around several ridges. The one thing I noticed most was the constant whine as we were hiking through. Yes, it was Bunny. We have run out of coffee and other caffeinated drinks and she was not handling the lack of stimulants very well.
Unbeknownst to me, If I had pushed harder at the parking lot, I might have been able to persuade Bunny to make the side trip because as soon as we were out of sight of the road and houses and fellow hikers, the oatmeal kicked in (and we had skipped the athletic greens this morning). We found a large enough bush that we could avoid eye contact while I gained a happy Bunny back. To kill time, I got out the phone and checked if we might have a signal so I could find out more about the wind farm we are in. As soon as I took it out of airplane mode, I got a text from Kevin that he was less than 11 miles behind us and he was asking if we were going to be in Tehachapi, as planned, tomorrow. Our tramily is expecting!
I did find out some outdated information about this wind farm, but it didn’t add up. PG&E has contracted for 1.5 GigaWatts of power from the farm, but as of 2012, it was only about a 600 MegaWatt capacity. I can find nothing more current than that. There are, however, hundreds of more turbines currently under construction. We also found some information on some signs along the trail on the history and various sizes of turbine. The current mix includes turbines ranging in size from 250 kiloWatts to 3 MegaWatts with the larger being over 300’ tall. I am spellbound by this place.
Ivy and Wolf are very prerogative driven. When Wolf gets up of a morning, his first prerogative is water. Once he has water, his next priority is to set his tent up again which means he is off like a dart to get to camp. He typically arrives a couple hours before Bunny and I do. Sometimes Ivy will slack off and hang with us (she’s not quite the morning person Wolf is). By the time we arrive, Wolf has set up camp, secured water, eaten supper (even at 2 in the afternoon), and researched options for the next day. All this is a long winded way of saying we were not surprised when we lost sight of Wolf and Ivy going over the ridge a mile ahead of us about 45 minutes after we left camp. We just couldn’t figure out what they were going to do waiting on the road for 3 hours before our ride arrived.
We arrived at the pickup spot a full hour and a half before our scheduled time. Ivy was buried under her umbrella because there was no shade. Wolf had already been there almost 2 hours when we arrived and he was starting to get a little antsy. He strikes me as a person that doesn’t like wasting time. There aren’t many slouches that attain the rank of Colonel and Wolf is no slouch by any means.
Our ride arrived a few minutes early. We had been sitting around looking at all the trash so we were very pleased when he pulled out some trash bags and asked if we would mind cleaning up a bit before we headed to town. We quickly filled the trash bags and would have gladly picked up more. Wolf and I were trying to figure out how to jump the barbed wire fence to get at the bulk of the trash. Seeing how trashy this single exchange was made us comment that chain gangs need to be brought back. There are no “for profit” garbage pickup services cleaning up roads that would be hurt by the competition.
Chris drove us to our hotel where we quickly checked in, dropped our bags, and headed out for some town food. Protein bars and nuts are healthy enough, but dripping fat on a sandwich holds a lot more appeal. We ran into Kevin right away when we got to town and he followed us to lunch. We all got caught up on what had been happening since we last saw him 12 days ago. The rest of the day was spent on usual town chores such as bathing, laundry, and more eating. Tomorrow we do the PO and shopping, and quite possibly, much more eating.
EFG
I remember driving through the wind turbines when Marcia and I were heading to Sequoia National Park 2007.