Bees and a Tick

Today qualifies as one of the weirder days I’ve had on trail.

Have you ever been stung by a bee in the butt, then by another one in the chin, then followed by another one while you’re running down the trail in your underwear and trying to swat it away with your shorts that you were changing into? Cuz as of today, I have. Evan was a bit behind me at that point in the day and he found me running down the trail, pants-less, trying to figure out how to get away from the bees. Good show, I bet.

Evan was harassed by a bee today, too. His bee ended up getting stuck in his bushy beard, where it attempted to sting him but fell out and died on the ground instead.

Then there was the smoke. We came around a corner at one of the higher points of the day and saw what looked like a big fire off in the distance, but not far enough away for us to feel comfortable continuing much further down the trail. We looked into our exit routes and decided that we’d go forward another four miles until we crossed a major road. Once we hit the road, we found a big group of hikers who were trying to decide what to do next. We all decided to hop into one of the hiker’s friends’ van and head to Palmdale, where we ate all the Mexican food and watched Tick Fire updates on tv. Very surreal, and I was glad that our hiking pace was slow enough today to keep us from being too close to the fire when it started this afternoon.

Now we’re doing the usual eat too much food in a motel room while we wait until tomorrow to see what the fire does. Hopefully we don’t end up having to skip too much of the trail, because we’ve got less than 500 miles to go.