I woke after a bad night's sleep. There had been a rock right there where my hipbone met the ground, which is the biggest pea for this little princess. I ate, packed up, and dragged my ass along the route.
I followed the canyon for another few miles, walking along the rim or occasionally dropping g down into it for a quarter mile. A huge solo mountain, also named San Antonio, loomed ahead of me. At its base, I tacked right and started a pretty vigorous cross-country climb right up it's side. A couple thousand feet higher, I crested a saddle on the summit ridge and dropped down the other side, stopping to collect water from a spring bubbling out of the ground. A dirt road appeared and I took it, all the way down into the plains on the other side of the mountain. As I approached the bottom, I passed several signs telling me I had just been trespassing. My map showed it all as public property...
Once down on the plains, I started a long hike through a flat, almost featureless sagebrush plain. My landmarks, usually a solar well or stock trough water source, were few and far between. So were stretches of two-track road. I gave up trying to follow the map's route and just took bearings toward the next checkpoint.
In the middle of the day, and seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I came across thirty cows at a trough.
I kept going. The hours dribbled into the past, and I began to wonder if I was going to camp in this wasteland place. Pretty windy, and I wouldn't want to be stuck there in a thunderstorm, I thought. I picked up the pace.
Slowly, a couple hills began to appear in the distance. The sun was setting behind me as I got close to them. They had trees, and trees meant some shelter from the wind. It was with immense gratitude that I found a copse of junipers in the last light of the day. They formed a little hollow, carpeted with their needles and fragrant with their berries. I put out my ground cloth, made dinner, and passed out.
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