Pacific Crest Trail - Day 50 - Hikertown

Start: Mile 505.8 - Backcountry campground
End: Mile 517.6 - Hikertown / Neenach Cafe

We slept in because we read about Trail Magic at mile 510 starting at 8:30 am. 4.2 miles? Psssh.

We woke up to a swarm of bees around the tent, and when we migrated all our stuff to the picnic table we stashed our critter-proof food sacks on, found they were absolutely covered with ants.

This is an A(nt) 🐜 and B(ee) 🐝 campground, you can C 👋 your way out.

Packed up, but not stoked. Kristin has an ant on her face in this photo 😂.

Ok, pretend to be stoked. 😄

Crossing that hot flat stretch tomorrow night under a nearly full moon.

Enhance.

Still looks hot af.

I should have pulled out my camera for this scene. The desert is so subtly beautiful.

Dirt farm. Strangely a lot of the fields along this stretch had plastic debris tilled into them. I wonder how we all wound up with microplastics in our tissues. 🤔

Charlie out there grazing on scrubland and plastic. Not exactly Candy Mountain, again.

A hunt club also known as a place where you can pay to shoot the wildlife collecting near a spring on our property after Los Angeles and big agriculture diverted all of the water from every canyon within 400 miles.

If you need a gun to experience nature, Fuck you.

Here’s me, except my sun-hoodie doesn’t have racocoon ears and tail, yet.

The next stretch is infamous for being flat, hot, and a huge stretch without water.

Hikertown sprung up as a refuge for hikers between mountain ranges. It has fallen out of repair as hikers now hang out at the Neenach Cafe up the road, run by the same great people.

The soft light and colors betray the harshness of this valley. They put Edwards Air Force Base down the road because there’s approximately zero chance of the desert (and existing water rights) supporting substantial development out here. Richard, of Hikertown and Neenach Cafe fame (among many other achievements) says they’re going to build 95,000 homes out here soon. I don’t believe him, but I’ve also driven through Adelanto - let’s call it a coin flip.