October 15

For the first night in a long time I was warm. Louis mentioned he even slept without socks and stayed warm all night. Our tents were both dry with no frost as the sun rose in the morning, something that has not happened since we were near Donner Summit and were showered with snow. Once in town, all the locals were talking about how unusually cold it was last night, and both Louis and I were happy to hear this which means are freezing nights are mostly to an end. We still have elevation as high as 9,000 ft., but right now are loving the desert's temperature. Loving it so much, in fact, that we didn't look at the water report and just hiked out in good spirits to our current campsite which turned out to be a dry creek. It was listed as dry upon looking at the report, and now have a 9 mile hike in the morning before we see water. This still isn't too troubling since we were just in town and should be able to do the hike without an issue. I'm personally just glad to have decent weather again. We night hiked for two full hours and didn't have to put on gloves or a hat to keep our extremities from going numb. 

We had a successful town day too for a couple of reasons. We got showers and laundry done, and even had a complete breakfast with bacon and eggs at the local trail angel's house. We managed to not get sucked into the black hole vortex of town and hiked out before it was ridiculously late. The only downside was the limited selection at the store and we did not get any cheese, milk or a burger while in town. It's great to be on trail again, however, and we did cook up some pasta and sauce that we packed in for a first night away from town dinner.