Tom is carrying a little tracking device that sends me messages every few days. You can see that this is significantly more accurate than my previous system of approximation and divination. They are almost to Yosemite! They climbed Mt. Whitney! They made it through the scary icy parts (though significantly less icy this year than in the past; this positive development probably brought to you by Exxon-Mobile!). But that is all I know, since I haven't heard from Michael since I left him on the trail about two weeks ago. He expects to finish this segment by his birthday, this Wednesday, and hopefully I will have word from him then.
Luckily, this gives me a moment to catch up on the trip to California.
I flew into San Francisco on May 25, found Michael's buddy Tom on a street corner, and threw Tom, my partner Rachel, and her sister Claire into a car on Sunday, May 26, bound for Kennedy Meadows. My brother and sister talked about Kennedy Meadows as if it is a famous, mystical place, and as such, I had done little research. I plugged in my GPS as we pulled onto Telegraph Avenue, typed in Kennedy Meadows, and hoped for the best.
Tom the Snack Captain and Claire the dishonorably discharged Snack First Mate
Well, perhaps I should have planned a bit better. It turns out that Kennedy Meadows is not widely recognized by Google. 8 hours and 4 In N' Out burgers later, we pulled into a mountain rancher refuge called Kennedy Meadows-- population 200.
On one side of the mountains is Kern river desert lands, joshua trees and burnt-out areas and desert foxes included. On the other side is the Inyo forests, lush and cold.
We drove up to a log general store with a large porch, populated mostly by elders and their dogs. I should interrupt myself to say that Michael's instructions to me had been, "Go to the general store and ask for Longlegs." He seemed so confident that this would work that I hadn't questioned the plan, even when I received a facebook message from him warning me that there was no cell phone service in Kennedy Meadows. Now I was running two hours late and carrying my brother's hiking companion, bear box, and new shoes. I felt nervous as I jogged up the steps to the general store. If Michael wasn't here, I had no idea what I should do.
But there, of course, suddenly, he was: tan and bearded, surrounded by other skinny, dusty, happy-looking people who were wolfing down hamburgers and a Costco sized bag of Doritos. Michael has developed a tri-tone beard -- blonde moustache, reddish brown on his face, and black on his neck. He looks wonderful.
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