Earth Day!

Where are all the people? :) Slept well by deep creek last night and Hightower showed up sometime during the night at the campsite. A lot of the younger generation likes night hiking. Not I ! Although the last few nights, with the almost full moon (more on full moons later in the blog) it's been incredibly bright out! I still prefer hiking during the day.  And today, we saw ..... JJ and Lydia. No other thru hikers!! 

Since its earth day, I tried to get lots of good trail pics.

So here goes...

View from above of Deep Creek. We woke up beside it and walked along it for about 16 miles today.

A little dramatic trail...

Some amazing purple flowers. It seems so unreal, that along this sandy, arrid trail, with not a drop of water in sight, these vibrant flowers can bloom.

And here's some more...

Dr. Seuss is from around this area and you can't tell me that these flowers weren't inspiration for some of his work. 

Around lunch time we came to Deep Creek Hot Springs. Jumped in to the cold water and then into the hot. It was fabulous. And there were lots of naked people there. (Thus the full moon reference) We kept our clothes on because we did double duty, bath and laundry in one :)

Hiked on through the Canyon and came to Rainbow Bridge

And later came to Mohave River Forks Dam. Another example of the drought here.

No water but a tiny puddle down there. 

Oh, and it was a two rattlesnake day. 😜

So, out here there is a thing called hiker hunger. The first few weeks, it sort of means that you just get tired of trail food and hungry for real food. But now, coming up on three weeks in...the real hiker hunger kicks in. The 'my body needs way more calories' and 'I could eat a Big Mac, quarter pounder , large fries and a mcflurry' kind of hunger. It really just sort of hit yesterday. We are all low on food right now and we have 24

miles until I eat all of the above :). 

It was INCREDIBLY windy here tonight! We almost picked a camping spot up on a ridge, but instead hiked a few more miles down. The wind is practically lifting my tent so I can only imagine what it would have been like up there! 

The full moon is spectacular!