The hiking this past week has been challenging in many ways. I have hiked both my longest distance and my shortest. Leaving the San Juacinto Mts ay 9000 feet elevation, I hiked down 8000 feet and went 20 miles between water sources. Because I am not up to hiking 20 miles days yet, I dry camped between water sources. After the long descent I hiked 5 miles across the desert floor in the sand and wind at which point I started hiking back up to above 8000 feet elevation.
I love alternate sources of electricity and clean energy, but hiking past a field of windmills is erie. 
I entered a new map section. The majority of the trail was up hill in this section. There was an 18 mile stretch up Mission Creek that never gave a break from the climb. 
I want to know what kind of butterflies these horn tailed caterpillers turn into. They littered the trail at their own peril as most hikers were not as cautious of the small creatures as I am. I have been seeing lots of butterflies of many sorts, but they are much more challenging to photograph without sitting still for long peroids of time. 
The saddest sight I have seen is the animal cages at Preditor Instincts. There were many large animals in small cages within easy viewing of the trail. I was near the end of a long day and cried when I saw the poor living conditions of the majestic creatures. Film companies probably do not take cruel living conditions into consideration when they make the claim "no aminal were harmed in the making of this film".
This spot coming out of the San Juacintos reminded me of a hike I did to Thorp lake with the Panza family many years ago. There were lots of buzzing insects on the blooming sage. Bees bees bees!
Walking along the creek bed was a welcome change. Water in the desert is treated with respect. Some hikers will dip their feet in a creek, but even in the deeper creeks we are not bathing or soaking in the prescious water. Never do to someone downstream what you would not want someone upstream to do to you.
Many of the water sources are not a typical creek. I have found springs running out of pipes and drawn water out of cisterns. This was one of my favorite where a barrel was placed in the cave under the spring to catch the run off.
The stretch ended on a good note with the sighting of my first Joshua Tree of the trip just before arriving in Big Bear City.
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