June 30
Mile 524 – 541
The Aqueduct to Cottonwood Creek to Tylerhorse Canyon
I should be at a protest today but instead I’m napping under a bridge in the desert next to windmills.
The walk in the morning wasn’t awful. The heat and wind didn’t start up until around 10. The trail followed the dirt road next to the aqueduct. Here and there, random desert settlements. Bandits might live there. A trailer park full of cute trailers. Ooh bathrooms, damn, that fence probably means no.
I stumbled around sweating for about 10 miles. The path wove through a wind farm and I tripped out on the windmills. Maybe windmill is the wrong word. Windmill sounds wooden and quaint. These wind generators are about 5 stories tall. The blades are huge. Longer, I think, than a regular train car. On another trip, on my bike, I rode by a factory in Denver that made the windmill blades and I remember seeing the special extra-long railroad carriages for them. They made aeronautic whooshing noises and creaks and whistles. 
In the midst of the wind farm, there is a wonderful bridge that makes a puddle of shade. Next to it, a faucet. I was wrung out when I reached it. I threw down my tyvek sheet and tore off my shoes. For the next couple hours, I napped in the shade, rising occasionally to move my ground sheet when the sun reached my toes. It was deadly hot. At least 95 degrees.
According to the maps, there would be another water source in 6 miles. Much as I wanted to believe this, the possibility of a stream surviving in this heat was seriously unlikely. I loaded myself down and set off at when the air was finally noticeably cooling down. What a lovely surprise for me, to come into a canyon and find a running stream. Super tiny and trickling but real water!
Spinstera 