Ugh. That Dog!
There’s some crazy dog that came into the park and started bawling at 3.00 am. We caught sight of him after the sun came up and it’s an old bloodhound. Pretty timid too, but you can’t tell that from inside your bag at 3 am! Nothing much to do other than to zip up the tent flaps, out of sight out of mind, and hope it’s a friendly dog that would soon go away. It would come fairly close to the tents and then run off and then back again, always making that god awful noise.
The Horrible Dog
The road construction crew showed up about 5.30 and set the dog off again as well as making their own noise so we watered up and left.
We seemed to do pretty good making miles early in the cool of the morning. It’s a long 17 miles to Lind so I cameled up at the spigot and then carried 3.7 liters, Coyote was carrying 10 down low in the cart.
We didn’t know how far we’d actually go with our own dog. It was a slog, hot too. There were a lot of breaks making shade, and hiding under the sagebrush. It was nearing 90 degrees. Later, we ended up pushing for Highway 395 and the tunnels beneath, aiming for their shade. Once there we layed about until about 6, then finally made our way into Lind.
The trail early on.
Lind in the distance.
Pretty old considering there’s sage growing on top of it.
This wasn’t too hard to clear, just takes time. But be ready for it, especially if there’s been wind.
Friendly farmers around here!
The tunnels under 395.
Yay for shade, and flip flops.
From the tunnels under the highway we could see on the map that we were close to a road just to the north so we bushwhacked up to the road until we could walk up to the main road into town. This put me on edge, walking through all the junk, junked cars, and other stuff. This was obviously private property, but we couldn’t tell that from the map. I was having bad visions of a junkyard dog coming around every corner. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
Entering the sketchy area.
Once in Lind proper we went straight to Slim’s tavern. As we were walking up an older guy was arriving as well and walked right up to us and asked if we wanted to come in. Well, sure, but we have the dog. Turns out that this was the owner and it was more than ok. We just sat off to the side. It’s an old school kind of place and very accommodating. I had a burger and Coyote had the tacos. They hit the spot. Excellent after a long hot day.
Inside Slim’s
It’s the Man himself! Nice trail Pilgrim.
After asking about which park to camp in they told us the one pretty much across the road, sculpture park. So we went and pitched. The info page on the Friends of the John Wayne Pioneer Trail mentions that this is near a noisy trainyard and y’know… They’re Right! And not only noisy, I could also feel the rumblings of the passing trains. Makes it a bit hard to sleep. Oh well, it is what it is.
Lind Pitch, we stayed off the grass again due to condensation/sprinklers.
&c. 