Day 37 - Zero day at Tehachapi

Breakfast at Kelcy's Restaurant

Well, for breakfast I went over to the nearby Kelcy's, which is a local establishment. I got eggs with onions, mushrooms and tomatoes, home fries and biscuits with gravy. It was very good, but I couldn't even finish it all.
Idan wanted a change of scenery, so we checked out of the Santa Fe, and headed over to the cheaper Ranch Motel. It's a bit off the main road, but the room was much better, so it turned out well.

Just a strange murial

Later we decided to go grocery shopping for the next section. We messaged Kay, and she picked us up in 5 minutes. That was really nice of her. We bought our food, meeting a lot of other hikers in the store. Early-B bought some freeze dried Mountain House meals at the nearby Big 5 store, so I ditched two Knorr meals and headed over there (with Kay driving). Sadly, they had no vegetarian meals over there, and I had to trouble Kay for another quick stop, this time at the other supermarket, to get two Knorr meals again.
Back at the motel, we were just resting and doing nothing, when suddenly Idan thought of checking whether Lake Isabella, our next stop, has somewhere to buy gas canisters. They don't. So we had to walk the long long way back to the Big 5 (nobody stopped to give us a ride), buy the damn big can they were selling (they didn't sell the smaller ones), and walk all the way back. Annoying and tiresome.
We were looking around for someplace to eat, doing a short tour in the main street. The Italian restaurant seemed nice, but Idan was too afraid by its atmosphere. Or maybe it was the fact that Penguin was there with her husband. Anyway, we left.
We passed by our old motel, and met Sock Pot, who told us that Cheese and Butters were in our old room (oh... the memories. Feels like it was yesterday), so we dropped by to say hello. Then we just got back to our room and ordered Domino's using their app. It wasn't easy, but we managed to get it to work.

And Pizzas for dinner

Day 35 - pct mile 529 to mile 549

After a short, warm, night at the spot we crashed in last night, we finally got up and got moving just around 7:00. We were still last to move from the campsite. And also had some hikers pass us, who, we assume, started before sunrise from Hiker Town.

Will trucking past me, in between the wind turbines

The first 5 miles towards the Cottonwood cache were like last night - a flat and boring road walk. The views are not all bad. There is something hypnotic in seeing all those wind turbines rotate together. And the heat wasn't THAT bad. And we had a nice wind to keep us chilled and relatively dry.

Will, Alpine Start, French Toast and two others which hall remain nameless (Sorry, I don't remember their trail names) at the Cottonwood cache

At the cache I drank a liter of Gatorade (from the powder) and had some snacks, before heading on towards our next stop, another 6 miles ahead.
We made a short nap stop on the way, and still managed to get to the Tylerhorse Canyon before it got to hot. We stopped under a nice, somewhat shady, tree on the left, and later discovered that "everyone" went down to a bigger tree, a bit off the trail to the right. Oh well. We still rested there for a couple hours, to let the heat pass.
We finally left to finish off our day at around 14:00, with about 7 more miles of climbing to reach the water cache at mile 549.
It was indeed a long climb, but we got there at the end. The cache had some gallon bottles with water, and a big stack of half liter bottles as a bonus. So we were all good.
A short while later Salt Shaker and Xtra Smile came along. They did what we did from last night. Only they started before dawn, this morning. So it's 30 miles with no full sleep. Very hard.
Early-b came in as well, as did Pedi, Quinoa, Soap Box and Half-n-half. Some of them camped here, and some went a bit further on.
Only a short day into town tomorrow.