Day 14 two weeks!

Miles hiked: 12.7
Camped at: mile 122.2
Hikers I camped with: 1
Total up/down: 2,989' / - 879'
Steps: 41,138

I have to get out of warner springs... I feel like I am stuck here and am starting to miss the trail. I didn't plan to leave till mid morning so I could have a pretty relaxed morning. Again we had a pretty windy night, my tent did great but others didn't fair so well. The usual morning stir started around 6am. The community center doesn't open till 8 so we have a couple hours to do our chores and sit around.. I did the usual breakfast there, charged my devices then headed out around 11. A little later than I wished and immediately wondered what I was thinking! It was hot and I soon realized all up hill, or up mountain should I say. The nice thing was that in the for a couple hours I got some cover here and there from the lushness of the river valley we were in.
Did I mention it was all up? I'm not sure what the elevation gain was on that, but holy cow, that was some hard hiking! It seems that I am getting a bit stronger, my legs and butt didn't hurt as much, but all sorts of weird pains were going on in my feet! I pretty much had to take ibuprofen and aleve constantly.
Water was an issue after the last river crossing, a spring was pretty dry and written in the sand nearby was "bad water" and "gross". I knew if I did a decent amount of miles today I would only have to hike a couple miles in the morning for more. I picked a goal campsite. Basically my app shows me where areas are that I can camp.  Some are small 1 person spots some are bigger.
It was starting to get dark and I wondered how far Barbara (I mean Achilles, her trail name) had gotten so I turned my phone on. One site that I thought she might be at had no one, so I kept going. 1 more mile to the next one and I would have to stop there. I checked my phone to see how close I was and there was a message from Achilles saying she was at 124. I had just started 124 so I knew I was close, but the site I had in mind was at the end of 124 so I kicked it into gear as the sun had set and the light was fading. Not 5 mins later I see her tent tucked in a nook. I can't believe I bumped into her like that I had thought that she was way ahead! We squeezed my tent into the space and talked about how rough of a day it was then quickly went to bed

Lots of pics today... enjoy

A delicate balancing act..

Look for the spider in the pic below...