At last.

Day 18. Boy, am I stuffed. When we got off solo today I put away two thirds of my cheese block, my orange, all my cliff bars, a bowl of mashed potatoes, my chocloate, and a cinnamon bun. One of the bars was peanut butter, but I liked it anyway. I don't know whether my tastes are changing or I just didn't care. After lunch we backtracked to resupply and then hiked about a mile into Grapevine Canyon to our campsite. We'll be staying here for two days, as tomorrow is rock climbing.

Day 19. Whoa! First things first: M2 discovered the mangled--no, the shredded carcass of a coyote right behind our campsite. Reactions ranged from running off shrieking to nodding and saying, "cool" to me: I crouched over the carcass in my super-bloody shirt with my blood bandana tucked in as a napkin while N2 took a picture. He'll be sending it to me when we get back...That quesadilla was so wonderful! Felt like I was eating real food again. Climbing and rapelling were also enjoyable. My hands are grey from the rope.

Day 20. After a few hours of steep hiking, we've stopped for lunch. I am not very perky at the moment: while I was setting down my backpack my kneecap went out again. It popped back in on its own, but I could tell from the pain that this was the worst yet of the trip. It always happens when I'm putting my pack down. P2 says that if she catches me moving my pack on my own she'll beat me up. Fair enough; I have no desire to have my knee deteriorate into evac condition. But it still frustrates me, as I know I'm strong enough to handle my pack and I'm otherwise in great condition. I'll have some ineresting knuckle scars, however, and I stabbed myself on a joshua tree on the way up here. In other news, we are now on independence (read: the home stretch of AWE). After today it's just another day and a half of hiking.

Day 21. Ugh. Last night was one of the worst nights of my life. A too-tight knee wrap kept me awake and in pain well past midnight until I could remove it, and I couldn't get to sleep until almost three because it was freezing! I estimate I'm operating on three to four hours of sleep right now. We've hiked three and a half miles this morning, and there are sill several to go. The terrain should be easy, so we'll make good time. As predicted, the high/low pack contained chocolate. I ate mine this morning...Now I appear to be developing an ankle condition. Fortunately it isn't too serious, and N & K recommended just making sure my boot is tight. We've broken for lunch. Bored...Now it's evening and we are at our water refill area. We're about an hour behind schedule, and we still have two miles to hike before we reach camp. Tomorrow we have to hike eight miles to reach base camp by two-thirty. To think that AWE is almost over. I confess myself disappointed; I expected AWE to be deeply meaningful or impact my life somehow, since the seniors made it out to e that way, but all I'm taking away from this are a slightly improved physique, a dozen or two pages of journaling, and some new scars. E just suggested we skip dinner tonight to save time. I could go along with that. I just polished off my gorp and I still have food to spare.

Day 22. Independence is over. In another half hour we'll hike the last mile or so to base camp. During the morning we hiked through a narrow, smooth-walled canyon that just had to have been used in a movie at some point. At the end of this break I plan to get out my old, blood-spattered clothes with which to hike in. Here's a funny note: as we packed up this morning, for whatever reason I was thinking about how to meld Pokemon with the Mutants & Masterminds RPG system. I may have to get out my old Pokemon games when I get home. I stil remember huge amounts. It's actually a bit scary how much I remember from the old games (I stopped keeping up with Pokemon before the third generation was released).

...And that does it for my Death Valley journal. If you want to read the rest, search through my blog history. I'm too lazy to go hunting myself.