Beautiful, frosty trees. Just what you'd expect in the Mojave. Uh...no!
The sun came out pretty quickly and warmed things up and we had some pretty awesome trail. Started out in a piney forest with huge boulders.
We hiked about 6 miles and came to the water source. Filtered a bunch of water since this was possibly our only water for the next 2 1/2 days. 13 pounds worth. Pack was heavy!! Met a hiker named Skittles there from Poland. ( about 7 miles later, we actually did come across a water cache with lots of water, so we guzzled some and refilled.)
Hiked on a came to a really strangely stark, but pretty section. It had been burned, so there were the skeletons of the trees, but then these vibrant purple flowering bushes everywhere. And they smelled amazing too. The contrast was almost magical.
Then there were the trees silhouetted against the bright blue sky.
Then we came to some more stereotypical desert hiking. Scrub brush and sand.
So I've always heard the term 'the middle of nowhere' ...and today I was there. It's just about 60 miles of north of Tehachapi if you are wondering. We hiked across these extremely vast, barren mountains and valleys where there was literally no signs of civilization. No roads. No houses. No streams. No soda machines (surprise surprise...I could really go for a Diet Coke right now) Just miles and miles of desert mountains as far as I could see.
The wind died down for awhile, and at times I could stop and listen and hear absolutely nothing. Very peaceful.
Towards the end of the day, we had a few miles of climbing up a 'beach mountain'. The climb itself was pretty gradual, but the inches of deep, fine sand made it challenging. And the wind picked up to gale force. And the temps dropped. And we couldn't find a flat place to pitch tents so we hiked a few miles further than we'd hoped. Came to a few 'flatish ' spots by a stand of Joshua trees and called it good. Pretty cool with a full moon!!
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