Journal June 24 More Bonus Miles
We stepped out of the hotel’s driveway and onto the main road and in less than a minute the first car going by stopped. A ride for the records – Don, an electrician who lives on a ranch right on the divide, picked us up and delivered us right to the trail head!
We followed a forest service road up and down wide canyons and across rolling hills surrounded by sparse Ponderosa Pine forest.
Mud from last night rain clung to our shoes. It has rained during every town stop we have made. It’s an early and intermittent monsoon season. Yesterday, while in town, we had very intense rain almost all evening and night. And it looks like the clouds are building for another evening of the same.
The sound of cicadas filled the air with a loud, “wall of sound”, a cross between the humming of a high voltage line and cricket sounds. We had heard this before, in the hottest part of the day in the dryer desert areas south of here, but now with recent rains they seem even louder, as if they are mocking the conditions.
In the late afternoon/early evening we are racing the weather. The clouds are overcast, ominous and seem to be building. A distant wall of rain seems to be moving tangentially our way. We hope to beat the impending storm to the top of Mangas Mountain, get to the other side and down a ways to set up camp while things are still dry. In our hurry we dismissed a rock cairn by some electric lines as leading to something other than the trail. We weren’t sure where the fire lookout was located and thought that might be it. Having no time nor, with a storm moving in, any great interest in checking out the tower, we continued on down the road, until we were well beyond the top and down in a small saddle.
We set up camp and sheltered the tent as best we could against the rains and possible wind which delayed at at least until after dinner, only to discover as we finally relaxed and were able to look closely at the map that we should have turned at the cairns instead of taking the road, which resulted in a couple of “bonus” miles we woulds need to re-trace in the morning.
15.5 miles
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