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April 31, 2000
Day 2
Awoke at 6:30AM. It is a sunny morning, but very cold. Probably around freezing. There are scattered clouds, most of them pretty high. Last night there were many stars. There are no lights from any cities out here, and we are camping in the open wheat fields. There was also much animal activity at night. We heard a few coyotes howling, as well as many frogs. It is very relaxing. In the morning the sun comes up and all the birds start to chirp. The main tree in this area is the Ponderosa Pine, however there are very few of them. The hills are very eroded and smooth, and there is a lot of dust, suggesting very little rainfall. Almost everyone drives a 4 X 4 truck in this part of the world! It will be interesting to talk to some people.
This morning I was second to rise, next to Martha. I am letting everyone get up on their own today to see where everybody is at in their sleeping habits. Danae and Cody are still asleep, but the dog is barking. The only other vehicle that I’ve seen out here are crop dusters. It is because of their pesticides that they dump on the land that we can’t drink from the streams and lakes out here. Hopefully we won’t get sprayed!
The only litter I saw in our campground was an empty pack of Marlboro’s and a few shotgun shells.
The land here is either green (wheat) or brown (dirt) and the contrast is very striking against the blue sky. The dirt looks almost lunar and the green wheat fields make the appearance of an eternal golf course. Occasionally, a basalt pillar will rise from the ground, a reminder of what is really underneath all of this dirt and dust.
Lunch
Saw a coyote along the trail, running through a wheat field. Observed many apple trees alongside the trail. Our theory is that people used to eat apples on the old train tracks, then threw away the cores. Scott played a practical joke on Chris. He stacked a bunch of railroad spikes on the back of Chris’s pack slowly and quietly, adding weight to the pack.
Cody has blisters on her heel and a bruised leg (Brandy ran into her.).
The wind whips through the fallow fields and creates mini dust tornadoes. Some of them can get pretty big and around a hundred feet tall, maybe twenty feet wide. You can also see the wind patterns on the wheat. After lunch we saw about three coyote running through the wheat fields. Today we passed by a few farmhouses and some old abandoned houses, and that was it for buildings. The rest is just wheat fields as far as the eye can see.
Scott got an enormous blister on his big toe, and didn’t reveal it until the end of the hike. We have hiked 10.5 miles today! I got a very bad sunburn on my left leg and arm. It has been very sunny all day, but the clouds are starting to roll in and it looks as if some rain may be headed our way from the west.
Later on this evening the farmer who owned the
land where we were camping drove up to our camp. His name was Joe Schmidt or
something. He was an enormous man and Brandy wouldn’t stop barking at him. He
was pretty nice about letting us camp on his land, though he wouldn’t look any
of us in the eye and said, "Oh, I see" a lot.
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