Date: June 3, 2017
Miles: 0
Health: Feeling rested but my shin feels a bit iffy.

I slept poorly last night. The trailer, and the night, was so hot that I was up still at 2am. To add to the hotness, the wind picked up at night and kept rocking the entire trailer back and forth. Sleeping outside would've been a better option.

As the sun rises so early in the morning that it's almost impossible to sleep anywhere which isn't in a shade. I woke up as the trailer felt like a sauna and escaped it only to realize there was nowhere to go to escape the heat. The desert floor, and everything else down here, was just unbearably hot.

In the bunk room I find Taylor and the Swiss. Taylor is using MLD Burn backpack, which is the 38 liter version of the 48 liter Prophet I'm using. As I'm having trouble filling up my pack, and I've been wondering about the size of the Burn, I ask Taylor if I could try out his pack with my gear. He throws me the empty pack and I run into the trailer to see how my gear fits inside the 10 liter smaller pack.

I can easily fit all my gear, plus 3 days of food, to the pack. Wow. I seriously want a smaller pack. Only thing that I don't like is the small opening of the Burn. It makes getting stuff in a bit harder.

Soon the first people of our trail family start appearing. By the look on their faces, and the stories they tell, I'm not feeling bad at all about skipping this section. Apparently he trail was hot and full of biting flies. This matches what other people before them had been telling. I feel bad for my friends who are still out there as the sun starts to really heat up the air.

We take the early morning shuttle to the Neenach market to eat breakfast and to enjoy the air conditioner. It's all about the small things here. After filling our bellies with soda and burritos, we make our way back to Hiker Town.

One by one everyone, except KB (Sunshine) and Blis, arrive at the Hiker Town. Pony had heard a tip that the Wee Vill market would be a better spot to camp and starts to organize a ride for everyone there.

I was a bit skeptical and didn't really want to commit to leaving Hiker Town. It's where the trail continues, and I had already spread out all my gear. But the more I heard about the Wee Vill, the more it made sense to go there. There we could sleep on grass (instead of the never ending sand we've been on for the past month), and the restaurant and store would be right next door instead of a 10 minute ride away.

I ran back to my trailer to put my things back together and barely made it to the ride to Wee Vill. But I'm happy that I did. It turned out to be a great place. Other that our trail family there were hardly any other hikers there, and the place was pretty cool for resting and spending a day out of sun.

We setup our cowboy camps right along the fence on the soft grass and went to the restaurant to stuff our stomachs full. I had carne asada tacos and they were SO good!

As the place was closing up for the night, I managed to call Blis and Sunshine who were still on the trail and get their orders in before the restaurant closed. An hour later they both joined our ranks and Blis got to have the burger he had been talking about the whole day. It was good having most of the tramily back together again.

During the night I got woken up by the wind as it was just whipping everyone's gear around. I tried to secure Pony's stuff under her as she was sleeping next to me, and had to push Roller back on to her side as she had encroached a bit too much of my sleeping pad. The grass felt so soft to sleep against.