Day 40 - Tehachapi!

Technically, I'm not in Tehachapi yet, but I'll be there soon. I got to the road where I was planning to hitch and saw a sign for a local coffee shop. They offer to pick up hikers and bring them to town...for free! No small thing when the town is 12 miles away.

The plan is pick up my resupply box at the post office, then get a decent meal, then it should be about time for me to check into a hotel and figure out what I need to do to get back on the trail tomorrow.

One thing very high on my list of things to do is to get a good night's sleep! Last night was horrible--even worse than the almost-dog-mauling night the night before! As I mentioned in a previous post, I was planning to cowboy camp (without a tent). Not five minutes after I crawled into my sleeping bag, I started hearing things...things that I have heard before...things that sound like...MICE! They were everywhere! One even scurried right next to my head. Needless to say, I got up, set up my tent and hung all my food. I've never hated mice more than I did at that moment (and I'm still seething about it because I only got one hour of sleep!). Because after I did all that, they started to nibble on my hiking pole handles! So I hung those too. Then they started going after my tent! At this point I'm livid because I'm totally worn out and all I want to do is sleep. I finally moved my tent and that helped but only a little. So I set a trap by putting a couple little pieces of crackers right outside my tent door and I was waiting with a shoe. I thought if I could get one of those little turds, I could put him out there in the open for the rest of his buddies to see and be warned. Well, the trap didn't work, but after getting very close on a couple of occasions, I think most of them got the message. A few of them would still wake me up now and then when I heard them messing with my tent. I've never hated an animal so much. I'm DEFINITELY looking forward to a night in a hotel!