I wake up in the camp, and meet Danielle DuGre in the bathroom. She has been hiking all her life and looks much younger than she is. She is inspired by my journey and afterward will ofter to drive over five hours to give me a ride home. She tells me that if I keep up this hiking habit I can look as young as she does. And says that I should write a book when I'm done, that others will want to know how to do this.
There is a small store at the camp and I buy peanut butter and bread, diet coke, and some energy bars. I've got my calories for the day. Looking at the map I see that I might not have access to food for thirty miles or more, until I reach the town of Lompoc. Luckily, there are a number of cheap motels in Lompoc and I figure that if I can make it there one of them will have a vacancy. Finding a warm bed and shower to look forward to was always good motivation to put in a few more miles.
The CCT website said that the shoreline from Gaviota State Park to Canada del Cementerio was passable only at tides below 3 feet, and from there to Canada San Onofre pass only at tides below 2.5 feet. From Canada del Molino to Canada de la Posta only at tides below 2 feet. At 12:30pm, when I set out, the tide was at 2.7 feet, and rising. The two women who had done the trail the previous year also took the highway on this section, so I opted for the alternate route.
After today I reflected that I wasn't sure which was scarier, running on the highway, or on the beach at high tide.
In my notes I see that tonight was the night I realized why people find running at night scary, maybe it was the desolate highway that made me feel this way. In Riverside I always run at night. I've been chastised many times by friends, neighbors, and other people out at night. The one time I felt I might be in danger in Riverside at night, the man approached me to give me his can of mace, he thought I might need it more than he did. I kept it, and carried it with me on this trip.
After completing the beach portion of today's run, I turned to the highway. I had fun looking for interesting items by the roadside. I prayed that the universe might send me some money to help me with the trip. I began to find change, I think I might have found twenty cents by the end of the day, but I figured change was extra weight, so I didn't take it.
The lyric, "God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman too!" from "It's Raining Men," kept echoing in my head, and made me laugh. Was mother nature like me? I'm a single woman. I had a lot of time to contemplate Mother Nature on this trip.
After a number of miles, and hours, I arrived at another camp, which I knew had a store with supplies. It looked to be about a mile off the route, however, and I didn't want to make such a long detour. So I kept going. Only a mile up ahead there was a rest area. No food but a drinking fountain and a place to charge all of my devices. I remember this was when I realized that my external battery pack was having problems charging. I tried wrapping the charging cable around the battery to hold things in place, I got it to work in the rest area bathroom, but knew I would need to buy a new battery pack. This was also when I took the time to write down notes on the previous days of the trip. My mother had suggested I keep a daily log to look back on. I tried to take daily notes going forward and for the most part succeeded in writing down the basics, though I may have gotten off by a day or two.
After my downtime at the rest area I headed out again. Today's highway mileage was the most treacherous of the entire journey. I tried to walk along a ledge on the other side of a railing separating me from traffic, but soon the land fell away from the ledge in a steep slope, leaving me no choice but to run on a highway that had no shoulder, semis rushing toward me.
I was on high alert through the highway segment, relieved when I made it to a stretch of trail. Walking up to the trail's gate I noticed a sign warning of mountain lions. My ultra running friends were scared of mountain lions but I never had been. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the fatigue from running, that I was alone in an unfamiliar place without direct access to food, water, or cell phone service... for whatever reason, the thought of mountain lions worried me as dusk fell that night, and I tried to run fast through the trail, now looking forward to the next highway section. I had begun to feel like this run was some kind of epic saga, with a new obstacle to overcome around every corner. I recalled an "Are You Afraid of the Dark" episode from my childhood, when a kid gets stuck in a scary real-life video game. My trek suddenly felt just like that, a human video game.
I ran on through the night. A man I didn't know had started meticulously following my journey on Facebook and I half worried that he would jump out of the bushes. I checked in with my parents, they said, "now if I car pulls over for you, be wary." I encountered this situation later that night. A van coming toward me pulled over and stopped ahead of me. I ran into its headlights, trying to get a look at the driver as I passed. It appeared to be a woman, and I was relieved. Nonetheless, thoughts of serial killers continued to haunt me as I made my way toward the city.
It was around 1am when I reached Lompoc. I could smell food what must have been miles away, I had done over twenty miles fasted. I bought food at a gas station and looked for the nearest motel. Ahead was the Red Roof Inn, which I had seen on the map. I told a couple who tried to get into a closed gas station about the open one down the road. They asked me if I was okay -- I guess I didn't look okay? My imagination had tormented me since I had got on the highway and I must have looked ragged. I went for the Red Roof Inn. A little more expensive than I would have liked and something about the boy behind the counter rubbed me the wrong way, it was as if he enjoyed charging me so much money. I got to my room and breathed a sigh of relief, taking off my pack. Luckily the first thing I did was try to take a shower, because the shower didn't work, no water came out, and I had to get my things and go back to the front desk. At first the boy said that his maintenance man was unavailable at such a late hour, I went off -- "how is this possible, a room without a shower?!" He got me another room.
I washed my clothes in the sink again, and slept soundly.
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