Start: 0745 - near San Jacinto River
End: 1830 - Snow Canyon Road faucet
Miles (today) - 20
Miles (cumulative) - 214

I was so worried about the mouse/rodent chewing his way into my pack to get to my food that I had a difficult time falling asleep last night. Even though we have special food sacks that contain odors (thus theoretically keeping animals like that mouse from trying to eat our food), seeing a mouse in our tent vestibule made me nervous.  I turned on my headlamp and investigated every little sound I heard, sure it was that darn mouse eating his way into my pack and my valuable food.  It took me a long time to fall asleep.

The food sack must have worked because my pack was intact and my food was untouched when I woke up this morning.   Good to know - hopefully next time I'll rest easier.

It was a cold start to the day, but that's because we were at 9,000 feet.  Over the course of the day we dropped down to 1,000 feet, where it was nice to be greeted by the sun and heat again.  Yes, I endured 20 miles of mostly downhill hiking!  Even better, I was in a good spirits all day AND I survived!  (A new subgoal of this trip is to conquer downhills.)

As much as I hated to, I used the hiking poles today - I knew my knees would thank me later.  Using the poles wasn't as horrible as I remembered but the periodic clanging noise as they hit rocks was distracting and prevented me from getting lost in the quiet stillness of nature.  

Then we came upon the bees.

Some type of tree/bush along the trail was flowering and every one was covered in bees.   I think bees are fascinating insects and I love the sound of their buzzing, so I was thrilled  to hike to the sound of thousands of bees buzzing.  (When I was a kid, my dad was a beekeeper - so I learned to appreciate honeybees at an early age.) The sound was so comforting and it helped me ignore the clanging of the hiking poles.  I heard/saw bees almost all day! 

The bees made me think about my dad - he walked with me for quite a while today.  At one point I looked down at my shoulder strap and saw the roadrunner pin he gave me for good luck in grade school track.  I happened to find the pin while sorting through all my stuff in preparation for selling the house, instantly thought it would be a perfect good luck charm for this trip, and pinned it on my pack. A few days ago, I told my dad about finding the roadrunner pin and about putting it on my pack for good luck - he wanted to know if I've seen an actual roadrunner.  Well, just as I was looking at the pin and thinking about that conversation, I saw one!  It was running down the trail too quickly for me to get a picture but I thought it was a cool coincidence!  (Mom, make sure to tell Dad!)

After not seeing bees for a while (there were no more flowering plants for the bees along the trail), I figured that part of my day was over.  I thought about how I'd like to be a beekeeper someday and about how great it was to not get stung despite walking around bees all day and sometimes brushing up against the flowers they were on.  Then a poor little bee landed on my hand (where did she come from?) and got tangled in my hiking pole strap (stupid poles!).  So yeah, I got stung after all.  :(  I know this sounds crazy, but I felt so bad for the bee that I conducted a quick burial service on the trail and thanked her for taking my mind off of how tired my legs were (suddenly the pain in my hand was all I could think about). 

By the end of the day I was in a trance-like state - since lunch, I had been walking for 6 hours straight without a break and all my focus was on putting one foot in front of the other.  Suddenly, I heard the distinctive rattle of a rattlesnake and snapped back to reality.  I didn't bother to look for the snake; instead, I yelled "Aaahh!!!" and ran down the trail as fast as my tired legs would take me (which wasn't very fast) until my knee got mad and made me stop (about 5 steps).  I really need to start paying closer attention!

So much excitement!  We even passed 200 PCT miles today. 

When I finally met Nick at the water source (the whole reason we hiked 20 miles) I was pleasantly surprised to see the AT group (that's what I'm calling Bamboo, Lindsay, Shaman, Mash, Meredith, etc because most of them hiked the Appalachian Trail together a few years ago).  I chatted with them for a bit while Nick put up the tent. (For the record, I wanted to cowboy camp but he wanted to put up the tent).

As Nick and I were eating a late dinner, we saw about 15 bats flying overhead - they were so cool to watch.  It was a great end to the day.