Journey Day 45 | PCT Day 45

5/31/85

Up early and into Cinco in an unsuccessful search for agua. Owners of the gas stop/restaurant  where we’d hoped to get water “gone fishin’.”

So we  hike on to Cantil after I have another unsuccessful talk with Sierra Designs about my tent. Things look bleak on the tent front at this point.

From the Jawbone Canyon Road Store, where I chugged Gatorade, pop and ice cream, we take a dirt road directly to the Waring home. Jack and Pat Waring are patrons of PCT hikers.

I sit here under a fruit tree in the Warings’ small orchard in the midst of the harsh desert. As keeper of the Aqueduct Siphon, he gets all the water he wants for his oasis. Ken and Gwen Alley catch us again and we all mellow out at this wonderful break spot. Enchilada dinner at the Red Rock School tonight.

Another call to Sierra Designs. Apparent success with tent dilemma. We’ll see in Kennedy Meadows. I waste the afternoon reading the register and talking with the Ens.  I must finish “The Man Who Walked Through Time” sometime.

Megacats, dogs curious about the new visitors. They check out our food, even snatching Keith’s cheese. We head to the annual dinner benefiting the local k-3 school, eliminating 17-mile bus rides.

Fun times with the locals. Entertainment by students singing and skitting through a medley of American tunes. Again meet Jeff Sauer, a vegetarian ex-public defender from Cincinnati, now living in Alaska. He went to Bowling Green four years before me. He had been trying to catch us, but was too worn out and laid over at Warings. We expect to see more of him down the line.

Back at Warings, we decide to put off our departure until the morning and join the family in the living room for “African Queen” and lemonade.

The Warings are Mormons. They have a foster daughter and three biological children at home and one married daughter. A good example of the caring kind of people we’ve met along the trail. We crash late in the windy orchard!