Day 43 05/07 Deathmarch

Mileage: 37.8
Camp: 534.6

I woke up around nine o'clock, in no rush. Seems like I always get the best sleep once the sun comes up.
I broke camp and hunted down that water tank. It wasn't in the bushes or just off the trail, I ended up having to go up one of those OHV roads and turn down another. I lifted the steel plate lid off and filled up with three liters. I made sure I used the steripen this time; I'd read of mice and squirrels falling in this one.
The water had an off taste to it, but it's what I had. Can't be picky in the desert.
I hit 500 after a few miles and there was actually a sign this time!
I was kind of sad I didn't have to make one out of rocks.
Finally the trail started to descend!
Down, down, down I went all afternoon until finally I hit the flats. The trail almost disappeared into picturesque fields of wild grasses. Sometimes I just had to head the general direction I knew I was going.
I got to the Hikertown Hostel at mile 518.4 just after 6:00pm. This would have been a great place to end the day, but this is where I believed Dan and Joe's day began.
Plus I had skipped the Anderson's to catch up with them. I couldn't stop now.
I walked inside the gate and rang the bell like the sign said. No one came out. I filled up my water reservoir at the spigot and continued on.
The sun began to set as I got to the aqueduct. Thank God. That meant I got to walk dirt roads for the next 20 miles or so. Normally, that would mean you'd bake alive and you'd be cursing it. But for me it would be night. That meant a wide, stone-free path, generally even flat.
I walked until well after dark. I sat against the giant iron aqueduct pipe (the only wind shelter) and cooked my dinner. I had a guest, a beggar kangaroo rat that stayed just out of the light from my headlamp but never more than a yard away.
Soon I was walking again.
The moon came up, an hour later than normal. It gradually went from orange to white as it rose higher in the sky.
I walked. And walked. And walked some more.
I'd always wondered how far I could go in a day.. How long I could hike.
Tonight I'd get to put myself to the test.
Everything takes on a sinister costume in the night- a tree or a bush can look like a person or a piece of rope a snake. I even came up on some cows in the middle of the night and couldn't tell what they were until I was right on the other side of a fence and they were staring me in the face.
They seemed just as surprised to see me.
Hours went by and I continued on. I finally began to see the giant wind turbines above me. Every once in a while a breeze would blow and one of the giant blades would turn and let out a metallic groan that would catch me off guard and echo for miles.
At 2:30am I passed what looked like a bag of trash in the bushes on the side of the road.
I had a weird feeling, so I turned on my headlamp (I'd been hiking without it to save battery) to see.
I jumped. It was a body!
Finally I had caught Dan.
Cocooned in his black mummy bag he was sound asleep. I was so ready to quit for the night but I didn't wanna wake him up and scare the hell out of him at two thirty in the morning so I kept walking. My feet screamed at me to stop. Every step made them throb and ache in pain but I kept going. I was almost to a small bridge where there was supposed to be a water spigot when I heard a pack of coyotes screaming and crying up ahead.
It made my blood run cold.
Any of you who ever grew up with coyotes or had them around your neighborhood know the horrible sound of them catching their prey. One two of them isn't bad. They'll run from you. But five or six of them? They can take down a deer. They're vicious in a pack.
I could hear them just around the corner ahead. At least five or more, screaming and howling. They'd definitely caught something and were in a frenzy. I didn't wanna walk into that, so at 3:30am I laid down my mat a quarter mile short of my goal and knocked out. I was happy with how far I'd come.
The water would have to wait til morning.
If it was even there.