Sunday, May 18, 2008

360 view from summit of Baden-Powell

http://www.flickr.com/photos/asafantman/2503821999/

here is a link to the video (quick 40 seconds) of the view from the summit of Baden-Powell by the Chief! You see Neighbor at first, then the view, then the smoke from the fire by Mt. Baldy, then me coming up to the summit :)
me hiking up baden-powell (one of the Chief's pictures) I think you might have to click on the little box and it will link you to the Chief's website, still getting fancy with this thing!!!!

Day 30 Sunday May 18

No miles hiked today! A "zero day" :) We organized a massive amount of food though, so it wasn't exactly a rest day! Figured out what food we needed for the next 100 miles to Mojave and figured out what food we need for the first 113 miles of the Sierra's (from Kennedy Meadows to Kearsarge Pass) including the extra mileage that we'll do to summit Mt. Whitney (the highest peak in the lower 48) :) It is very close to the trail and just too beautiful to pass by (unless there is really bad weather) We fit the 113 miles of food into 2 bear cannisters (which we have to carry to keep the bears from eating our food) Overall a good day at the Saufley's! We just rode the bikes down to the store and got some cereal and milk for dinner (too hot to cook) and then some ice cream for later...... Oh, and we just heard that the 39 miles of trail we missed opened back up yesterday, so we are contemplating renting a car and driving back down to hike those miles and put it all behind us.......but Low Bridge and Dandy wanted to go with us and they are not here quite yet.....maybe they will show up later tonight and we can form a plan! It would be great to go hike Mt. San Jacinto and enjoy the SNOW up there instead of heading into the Mojave desert in record breaking high temps, but we'll see!

Day 29 Sat May 17




Up for 0530 and walking the remaining 3.5 miles to town! I put on my clean short sleeved shirt for the walk in, what a great feeling being in short sleeves! (the sun wasn't up yet, so I couldn't burn to a crisp) Walked past Valquez Rocks (I guess these rocks are famous for being in some old Western movies) We were at the Saufley's house by 7am and signed up for a shower! Then we put our dirty clothes in a basket and L-Rod does all the laundry! Yeah! They have quite the system here and it's great! Found our many boxes in the garage (everyone's in alphbetical order) Wow! Our ice axes made it in once piece! (we will mail them ahead to the Sierra's from here) and 2 boxes of food and stuff that we'll probably need for the Sierra's AND a care package from Gram and Grampa Kingsbury with trail necessities and real homeade cookies in it! (our first homeade cookies on the trail) Priscilla "tried" to pass her cookies off as homeade........nice try! :) And a care package from our friend Yappy (AT 2005 friend who lives in Alaska) filled with all kinds of good trail goodies and a 3 pound bag of M&M's (which we are eating now) And just in was a whole case of granola bars from Linda from work and Peter (who wants to make sure we are having FUN.....and we are!!) Thanks guys! And a letter from Grammy Peg (who recently figured out how to get to and read this blog!!! Good for you Gram and hello!!) After going through all of that, we signed up for the morning trip to REI (we need some new shoes for the Sierras) and grocery store. So, there were 8 of us hikers piled into this massive suburban and Neighbor was driving and off to LA we went! Ahhhhh! What an experience! The REI didn't have the shoes we were looking for, so we tried one other store, then went grocery shopping, then after all that headed back to the Saufley's. With traffic and everything, it took almost all day. As we were pulling off the highway, we get pulled over! Neighbor didn't have a seatbelt on and it is a California law, then the cop realized that there were 4 of us in the middle section of the vehicle (guess there were only seats for 3 there......so I jumped in the back) after all that, he just gave us a verbal warning, phewwww! What a day! Then we get back and who is there, but Stinkyfeet and Chris! Wow! What a fun suprise! We got to visit for a few hours and go out to dinner (Mexican)! They brought freshly picked strawberries, beer, watermelon, cherries and all kinds of good trail electrolyte replacement tablets for us to survive the desert!!! Thanks again guys!