Today had so many themes to the day and ended with Secret declaring the title here. Don’t worry. He wasn’t in danger.

Morning – before trail

We started the morning in our hotel. Very early . The kids woke too early and then both started feeling silly and wouldn’t go back to sleep.

We ate a generous continental breakfast and waited for our ride, Rachel. We got offered several rides from trail angels this morning in the dining room of the hotel but we want to keep our commitment and ride with Rachel. She’s been awesome and super supportive. So this morning was something of a hand off from her to the rest of the trail – but she was sure to remind us to call if we need anything.

She gave Secret a small notebook (like the size a detective would have on TV), small bag to hold it and a pencil. Secret loved that. He used it later in the day pretending to work at a restaurant and took our order.  Before bed he got me to write some of his thoughts about other parts of the trail (eg: how cold it was at the end of the day in the snow on San Jacinto). He was impressed he gets so many pages in the book. More than one!

Morning – on trail

It was one of those “tough out of the gate” days. For several reasons:

• Long food carry. Probably one of the longest so far.
• Long water carry
• Elevation gain from highway back to trail
• Lots of sun and wind exposure

I know a lot of people were feeling it. The long food carry and long water carry is a tough combo.

For us, we get nailed a few times on that.

For the long food carry – it’s like 85 ish miles to the next town. For me and Natasha without kids that might be a 3-4 day stretch at our usual pace. For us at Secrets pace that’s 8 days. So more days on trail needs more food.

Then we have more people so we need more food. Secret eats nearly the same amount of bars as me, gets a whole protein pouch (chicken or tuna or salmon) for himself at lunch, a third of our dinner and a baby food pouch. So that’s like an extra 40-50% more food split between Natasha and I. So for a single person that might be equivalent to 20% more, or another two days of food on this stretch.

So instead of carrying 3-4 days of food for one person in each pack we are effectively carrying 10 days of food.

For water carry, we carry an extra 0.5 L per 4 miles for Secret. But he hikes only like 10 miles a day so we also often need an extra litre for dry camping. It adds up.

Afternoon

I was nearly shocked at how many good campsites are available. So many. All wind sheltered. The slope of the ground near the trail is not very steep and we got into a lot of trees. Initially Joshua Trees but taller, dense trees later. Those give great sheltered sites. It was overwhelming

Evening

Natasha made an awesome dinner. We found instant rice with chicken broth and vegetables premixed at the store. Added black beans, cheese, tuna (ranch flavour) and chips. Bam. Even Secret liked it.

Despite some challenges with behavior, Secret did some friendly things for his sister and she was so happy and he then became very happy at it. Good payoff.

But later I guess our super early morning caught up to the kids. They started turning to pumpkins early. We struggled at bedtime. Secret didn’t get full bedtime routine. He was laying in bed after calming down and I accidentally farted and he said “I CAN’T BREATHE!”. Amazing.