The Beginning of our Journey: Washington to San Francisco to Walker Pass to Kennedy Meadows

We left Thursday, June 5th (happy birthday Daddy-O!), after work from Pullman, WA to San Fran. Our awesome Swiss friends thought it would be fun to road trip it together! Shout out to Patrick and Marc!!
Quite the journey-- got a flat tire at 4:30am, changed it to the spare... then that went flat right after. We waited for the tow truck and after patching the tire, we were back on the road.

We made it to San Fran about 6 hours later than planned but that's okay! Got a great hotel room the first night and then stayed at a friend of a friend's place-- THANKS MIKA! We left Sunday morning for Davis to stay with our friend Tyler. Our bus was leaving from Davis the next morning.

So we missed our bus from Davis, CA to Sacramento... Nice start to our journey. I guess we were a bit too comfortable at Tyler's. But no matter, we were able to catch a later bus for a small fee and catch a later train to Bakersfield.

The train ride was pretty nice. Lots of room to stretch our legs and eat some decent food! After a few hours in the train we made it to Bakersfield. We waited for about 30 minutes in the 108F heat for the bus to Lake Isabella. It felt like standing in front of a hairdrier. The road to Lake Isabella is very windy but beautiful. Once in Lake Isabella we ate at Taco del Mar, hit the grocery store for last minute supplies, and grabbed a sub sandwich for later. Against the recommendation of a local we decided to try to take the last bus to Onyx to hitch to Walker Pass before dark. Our gamble paid off and the very first car pulled over and gave us a ride to the pass. No more are we hitching virgins! The guy (Charlie) who gave us a ride drove an old beatup van with 228000 miles on it who he lovingly refers to as Betsy. He dropped us off at Walker Pass Campground. At the campground we awkwardly chatted with some other thru-hikers then set off towards Canada just before dark. The climb out of Walker Pass is quite pretty and provides views of the desolate valley below.

We continued after dark for about 1 mile using the moonlight to guide us. At the top of the climb we made camp and devoured our sub. It feels so good to be on the trail. All the worries have disappeared. Next few days we did lots of climbing. There are amazing views at every turn! Joshua trees, horny toads, lizards, a rattlesnake and one giant black widow!

Injuries are feeling good and doing more mileage than orignally anticipated. Last day into Kennedy Meadows Ford's achilles tendon started bothering him so we planned on taking as many zero days as necessary.