About every 5-7 days I leave the trail, get to a nearby town, buy food etc., and get back on the trail. Today in Tehachapi I shopped at an Albertsons for the next 7 days on the trail. This should supply me until Kennedy Meadows, the gateway town to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Now I have to unbox all this stuff, arrange it in daily bunches, and pack it in a stuff sack.

Anything that is unneeded or overflow goes in the communal PCT hiker box. The hiker box is typically located in a common central location (in this case the lobby of this hotel) and contains anything that one hiker couldn’t or wouldn’t need or wants which is freely given to any other “less fortunate” hiker. For example, I’ve had to buy 10 hot chocolate packets, but only need 7 so the rest go in the hiker box.

You know a real hiker when the hotel room A/C is too cold and the hiker can’t figure out how to turn it down or find a blanket – so the hiker gets out their goose-down 20F sleeping bag and gets in it on top of the covers to get warm.

Yes, I really did this at Cahon Pass Best Western a few weeks ago!

A zero or zero day is when a hiker does not do any trail miles for that day. Sometimes it is due to injury. Other times it’s for relaxation or medical or dental reasons. Tomorrow is my second zero. I need to do two major things. The first is to resupply my food from Tehachapi to Kennedy Meadows. So off to the local supermarket I’ll go tomorrow. I’ve not been very good so far planning my food because I’ve bought too many dinner items which are too heavy. The other thing is to plan out my schedule so I can meet my son at Tuolumne Meadows so we can hike from there to Echo Lake together. He’s been tracking me and told me I’m going too fast and I need to slow down. How do you do that? You take a zero day!

Update:
I have taken the following zeros

1. Agua Dulce, CA (resupply)
2. Tehachapi, CA (resupply)
3. Independence, CA (resupply by bus to Bishop)
4. South Lake Tahoe, CA (resupply and meet up with Kathy)
5. Ashland. OR (visit Christy and Marcus)
6. Cascade Locks, OR (wait for PO to open on Monday)
7. Stehekin, WA (wait for PO to open after Labor Day)

During a phone call a few days ago my son mentioned that he had mailed a general delivery package to Tehachapi. Well I picked it up today (as you can see below the Post Office was a long walk) as the first thing when I arrived and it was a perfect – 6 Tootsie Roll Pops and Melt-in-the-mouth cookies – YUM! And not too heavy so carrying them on the trail is quite easy. The problem is that I like them so much I doubt they’ll exist in two days. Crunch, crunch, chomp, chomp, yum, yum.

Today my hiking buddy Bilbo headed to Mohave whereas I headed to Tehachapi. We each had a package in the respective town’s post office. We’ve hiked together for the past week and the companionship has been fun. We might meet again before he gets off trail at Walker Pass, but one never knows. So we said our goodbyes and headed off. Thanks, Bilbo.

Earlier today as we hiked through yet more wind turbines.

He took the lead and set a good even pace especially climbing hills and there is ALWAYS hills on the Pacific CREST trail.

By now you think I’m a big flower kind-of-guy and that’s not the case. I don’t have a garden, I don’t grow or cultivate flowers at home, and I wonder why I’m posting so much about flowers. For some reason these California Poppies are catching my eye. They are a brilliant bright eye-catching yellow-orange.

We stopped at about 10 PM and slept in the middle of a wind farm – whoosh, whoosh, whoosh all night long.

Today as I walked through a once burned out area heading towards Tehachapi I saw numerous fields of wildflowers. Some all yellow, all white, all purple, or mixed. I especially liked the fields of little purple ones.

After leaving Hikertown we followed the California and LA Aquaducts for miles and miles mostly along dirt roads – yup, another day of pseudo-road walks. We left Hikertown at 3:30 PM and night hiked with a full moon as we are starting to cross the western Mohave desert. It was much cooler then.

An unusual hiker spot is a farm with lots of little buildings forming a small town. As a result it’s called Hikertown. This is the last spot before I cross the western Mohave desert. Bilbo and I will be leaving here at 4 PM and hiking at night to start the desert crossing to a water cache part of the way.