Friday April 18, 20.8mi/33.5km

NE boundary of Anza-Borrego (96.0/20ft) to Bdy of Mecca Hills Wilderness (116.8/60ft) (CA)

Today was a long road walking day. I had to hike across an entire valley of private land, which meant traveling 21 miles before I could stop to camp. The first mile was pretty pleasant, on a quiet dirt road.

As I got further down that little road, I noticed some industrial agriculture, a date palm farm.

Then I turned North onto a four-lane divided freeway, which was less fun. I traveled that before for a couple of miles before I finally turned off onto the old two-lane highway that it replaced. My plan was to stop at the Oasis Palms RV Park to get a snack and cold drink but instead I stumbled upon this Alamo convenience store.

I was surprised by the amount of hiker foods they had stocked, But I wasn’t tempted to buy anything since I would have to carry it for the rest of the day and I knew the dollar store in town would be cheaper. I walked along the old highway all morning, and it was pretty quiet with only an agricultural truck every so often.

Just before noon I had reached an intersection with 66th Avenue, where I would turn right into town. I saw this guy with his little brightly colored food cart and decided to see what he was selling.

He was selling fruit! Huge cups of chopped fruit covered with various spicy sauces and some Tajin seasoning. After some initial stumbling in Spanish, our conversation smoothed out and I explained what I was doing out here, hiking hundreds of miles across the desert. He was very nice and gave me a free cup of fruit!

I hadn’t eaten fruit in a week, and it really hit the spot. While I was sitting there eating, I noticed he had a steady trickle of customers come up, usually riding some piece of agricultural equipment. After eating and resting in the shade for 30 minutes, I got up and hiked the last couple of miles to Mecca. I was almost there, and then I had to wait for a really long BNSF train.

It seemed like basically a town of agricultural workers, but had recently received funding to improve its infrastructure. There were new signs, streets, and little parks everywhere.

I went to the post office to pickup my replacement credit card (that I had lost the day before I started the hike), and they didn’t have it. I filled out a form to have them forward it to the next post office, and then went across the street to resupply at the Family Dollar. After that annoying chore was done, I went to a nearby taco shop.

It was pretty delicious and I stayed there for a couple of hours charging my phone, headlamp, and batteries. They kept giving me refills on Dr Pepper, so it was hard to leave but eventually by 5pm I did.

It was a nice pleasant walk out of town along a quiet paved road on a sidewalk. I kept seeing these sad little signs plastered everywhere around town, I hope they find their dog.

I had about five more miles of roadwalking to do before I could get to public BLM land. I passed by lots of industrial agriculture along the route.

In the distance to the northeast, I noticed the clouds were gathering over the mountains that I would be in tomorrow.

I even passed by a massive mile-long lemon tree field.

Near the end of the roadwalk I crossed over the Coachella Canal, which takes massive amounts of water from the Colorado River, part of the reason that river no longer reaches the ocean.

It was heavily signed with no trespassing warnings, and I didn’t see a safe way to get down to the water anyway, so I continued on. Once I turned onto Painted Canyon Road, it was a nice relief to be walking on a soft dirt road again.

That only lasted a mile before I reached public land, and I setup camp behind an amazing tree which blocked all the wind.

I’ll have to look up what type of tree that was and make a point of camping near them more often. The guidebook does a good job of listing all of the plants that you will see, but there are no photos so it’s hard to know which species is which. Tomorrow, back into the mountains!