Tuesday May 20, 8.5mi/13.7km

Oak Creek PCT (202.4/4110ft) to Highway 58 (211.1/3840ft) (CA) -0.2mi correction

I started super early today as I had to catch the bus at 9:30, and I had 8 miles of hiking to cover. The trail was pretty peaceful at 5:50am!

I pretty quickly passed by a group of tents, presumably still sleeping. PCT hikers. After crossing a paved road, I entered the main part of the wind farm, it even had an interpretive sign.

This area was expectedly windy and didn’t have any trees but was oddly beautiful, especially in the morning light.

In 2015 I had accidentally missed this little 8 mile section, as there are 2 roads that access Tehachapi, and the trail angel who gave me a ride returned me to the trail in the wrong spot. So I got to see it for the first time!

Today was forecasted to be hot weather, but since I got all my hiking done before 9am it was quite comfortable.

As I started to descend from the hilly windfarm, I paralleled a fence which had this random sign on it.

And a mile later there was a nice bench that was installed as an Eagle scout project.

I definitely had to sit and test out the bench, I can confirm it’s an excellent place to enjoy sourpatch kids while overlooking the valley. The trail descended down to another road where I was greeted by three identical looking friendly dogs.

They had collars but no tags, hopefully they’re not lost. They followed me for a minute and then turned around back to their shady spot. I could hear a train in the distance so I hurried down the road and got across the tracks before a very long Union Pacific train came through.

I got to the bus stop on Highway 58 at 9am, a half hour early but I had plenty of time to sit and relax and snack.

The bus arrived right on time and apparently it’s also free for the month of May. This is a new service, the Kern county Transit authority added a stop on the PCT along their existing route, and it goes to both Tehachapi and Mojave, about five times per day. Sweet.

I was in town before 10am and walked directly to the post office to pick up a package. I love these little towns with their artwork on every building.

Then I walked down to the hardware store to buy another fuel canister, and the McDonald’s to eat lunch and hang out until I was allowed to check into the motel. That was another PCT hiker there, a guy from Germany who is skipping up from here to Mammoth. He was the first German backpacker I’ve ever met whose English wasn’t good so we struggled to converse but it was still fun. At 1pm I walked over to the Erth motel and checked in, dropped off my stuff and then went over to the Family Dollar to resupply.

Uh-oh. Closed. This was my intended option for resupply as the big grocery store is over a mile away and I don’t want to walk that far. Also, I wondered what could have possibly happened that caused the health department to shut down a store that does not serve prepared food. Mystery! I ended up finding a little local convenience store and pieced together a resupply for the 3 days between here and Lake Isabella. The rest of the day I spent relaxing in the motel room and snacking and planning the next sections of this hike, which is being complicated by the snowmelt runoff in the Sierras and high river levels. I called a ranger station and got some advice. I might have to skip the Sierra section and come back to it in the fall, darn. I went out and got dinner at a Mexican food truck a block away and then relaxed while watching movies, flipping between Lord of the Rings, and Weekend at Bernie’s. Good day.