Tehachapi to Kennedy Meadows

From Tehachapi the trail follows the highway for a mile and then cuts up into he arid hills. We did most of this hiking at night or close to it. The moon as close to full and it was easy to walk by.

We found this little guy along the trail. Usually I would just find rattlers but this time it was a pretty snake.

There are several burn areas from Tehachapi into Sequoia National Forest. They are quite beautiful areas because the wild flowers go crazy. My favorite are the Lupines. They smell so strongly. In this area there was a rock with a mini natural arch :)

We switched from night hiking into day hiking when the trail shifted into Sequoia National Forest. You can see here the desert meeting the tree line. A storm was brewing when we were rolling through so you could feel the humidity immediately. It was very windy. I mean can't walk forward in head wind type windy. 

As we enjoyed walking on duff instead of sand, we crawled our way toward snow capped mountains in the distance. Each vista made me more and more excited for the Sierra's and for the end of the water report.

I thought that coming into Kennedy Meadows we would have less sand and more trees, but it was more arid than I expected. The granite out crops called my name and I would love to go back and explore the area with some gear and rope.

Kennedy Meadows General Store was about what I expected. Good food, slow service, funny characters, and people spending way too much on booze. The area behind the store in which they allow people to camp was fine but small. The 4 privies were gross and overflowing from a crowd that gathered there over the weekend, but all in all it was a place that had Ben and Jerry's and burgers so it was a hiker heaven. My favorite was getting a ride from the owner of Grumpy Bear's son to get breakfast. Grumpy Bear is a restuarant from a different time. They have what they have and you get what they want to give you. The only question I was asked was 'how do you want your eggs?' They gave us bacon, two eggs, and two pancakes. They also give you more pancakes without charging you extra so we all ended up getting more pancakes. I loved the place. They work hard to even get food up there; there is no delivery truck, so you get what they have until they run out. All in all a good place but really my mind was on Whitney.