Hi friends! I’m learning the hard way that the more mile I put in every day, the less and less time I have to be in any sort of communication with the outside world. I guess I should have seen that coming!
Anyways, it’s been about 300 miles since you’ve heard from me here last. Bananas! The best kind of bananas if you’re asking me (besides dehydrated bananas with almond butter mid day on the trail, thooose are ultimate).
An update that is far overdue- I have a trail name! You can call me Tinkerbell! Or Tink, Tinky poo, tinker beans, Stinkerbell, Tinky tank- dealers choice. Most people take trail names while on the PCT, just for the fun of it. Some get their trail names from funny stories, some get names that just fit. Mine was apparently a natural fit, people liked it for me. I like it for me too so we’re going with it.
Anyhow, wowie! I finished off the desert and made it to Kennedy Meadows, what we call the gateway to the Sierra. My mileage has hiked up a good amount, my longest day being 26.4 miles. Towards the end of the desert, in the Mojave, we had to plan most of our days around our water sources making some days and stretches a lot longer and heavier than we would have liked. A lot of these sources being water caches maintained by past hikers or generous trail angels from the surrounding area. They spend hours driving in water to locations where service or fire roads meet the trail. The desert section would be impassable nowadays without these caches.
Just after spending some time off in Lancaster/ Acton, my friends and I hiked through an infamous section- hikertown to the LA aqueduct. Hikertown is as odd as desert cities can get. It’s essentially someone’s backyard made into a movie scene set for hikers. I can’t even put the words together to describe it, so here are some photos to do the work for me: 
We did washboard laundry, picked up our resupply packages from the “post office” (a garage with hiker boxes strewn all over the place), took some naps in a motor home and headed out to the aqueduct.
“The aqueduct” is a stretch of the trail that runs on top of the LA aqueduct- I believe because the way the trail ran was through private land and this was the only place to put it?? In years past this stretch of trail has been one of the most miserable and unforgiving- miles and miles of service road walking with absolutely no shade. Many times people have to hike it at night, so hikers always try and make it a fun experience and twisting it up with themes and fun outfits to make it more of an enjoyable experience. Fortunately for us this year, a cold front had come in the day we hit the aqueduct, so we got to hike it at golden hour and it was absolutely gorgeous! We packed out some drinks, played music (normally totally frowned upon on the trail), and enjoyed the sunset views and walking side by side with each other for hours. 
dancing around in the desert sun with my best trail buds was far fromIt was one of my most memorable days on trail :))
The aqueduct turned into a wind turbine farm, where the winds whipped us around like little tumbleweeds. It made for tedious hiking but awesome views! I loved being so up close with the machines. They’re an odd sort of beautiful, a bit like man made desert flowers. 
Tehachapi awaited us at the end of the wind farm, thank goodness! We ate and drank and Kareoke’d for hours at the veterans bar. It’s awesome to relax and share stories with all my buds off trail, out of the wind, showered and clean. 
With the desert almost finished, we’re all anticipating the sierra and very ready for a change of scenery, terrain and temperature. On our way to Kennedy Meadows!
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