Sunday December 10, 37.0km/23.0mi

Old Woman Mountains Wilderness (551.5/3260ft) to Hi Desert Oasis Store (574.5/2080ft) (CA)

I woke up and a thermometer inside my tent said 35F/2C, so cold! It took a few minutes longer to get packed up in the morning, since my cold hands were a little uncooperative but eventually we left camp a few minutes before 6am.

By 7:30 the sun had come over the hillsides, and I could feel the warmth!

Most of the day was pretty easy and relaxing walking on old dirt roads. By 8:30, it had warmed up to comfortable temperatures, and we stopped to take a break and sit in the sun.

I think pretty much all of our water sources in California are quail guzzlers.

We stopped a little early to have lunch, and realized that if we kept going at our current pace, we would be in town by 5pm. We decided to go for it, and camp in the public BLM land nearby the convenience store. The whole afternoon was walking on old dirt roads, usually in a wash.

On a long gradual descent to the valley, we came across a group of cows, and two of them were juveniles! Cool.

We kept descending slowly down into the valley to the north. After awhile, we could start to hear the traffic from interstate 40 and also the railroad.

Pretty soon we departed the “Heart of the Mojave” preserve, with only a couple of miles to go.

And immediately after we crossed a very disused looking paved highway, which happened to be old route 66. It used to run all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica!

We hiked up to the interstate and the railroad, passing under the railroad tracks right before a train went over them.

And of course I had to get a photo of the freeway sign.

Our resupply point for this section isn’t a real town, but merely a convenience store called the “Hi Desert Oasis”, an extremely overpriced Route-66 themed gas station and convenience store.

We setup our tents on the nearby public BLM land, and then hiked a couple more minutes to the store to buy some food. They didn’t sell any hot food, so I bought plenty of microwave burritos, frozen dinners, and frozen pizzas and put them all in the microwave. There was a little seating area inside with a few tables, and we spent a few hours just sitting there constantly eating, while charging our phones. After consuming about 4,000 calories (I was keeping track) at dinner, I decided that I was finally no longer hungry. Weirdly, I also wasn’t full either. We finally left the store at 8:30pm and went back to our tents and fell asleep.