White Oaks at the trail head to Condon Peak, I’m going to walk it for an hour or so, see where it goes, but I have no intention of climbing Condon Peak. I need to find a way into the back country and get up on the ridge, and this isn’t it, I know that. If the gate is locked at Clear Creek, and I cant get a cell phone signal to call the BLM field office in Marina to get the combination, I have to find another way – Joaquin Rocks Lookout Trail, – see below for map – I drove up and down Los Gatos Creek, looking, half the day yesterday, and its not where it’s supposed to be, and all I can say is I have no idea where the blazes I am, but who cares? The morning is invigorating, a modest incline ahead., I got a mojo on from that espresso, so I think I’ll power it on up. And a thought crosses my mind and I’m wondering: Do you think Joaquin had coffee in the morning when he woke up? flat on his back, his hat over his eyes, leaning his head against the saddle and giving a big ole yawn. I’ll bet the fire was already up and the water on the boil, his cohort in crime, Manuel Garcia, alias Three Fingered Jack, never slept. Ever since his infamous accident when he got his fingers stuck on the horn of a saddle in between the rope and a steer and he sat there and watched as it broke his two best fingers clean off his hand. He didn’t sleep much after that. It had nothing to do with his conscience, he’never so much a twitched in his sleep over the dozens of men he brutally murdered, so far as he was concerned they deserved it, every bit, revenge, pure and simple, for every one of the peoples he knew, some of them were good friends, their lives ripped apart by the Yankee Rascistas, ‘the stupid ones’, he would kill every last one in their sleep, That’s what kept him up, he was running out of time, he could never kill every last one, not even close, and he knew it. So when Joaquin sat up and started shaking out his boot just in case a scorpion was sleeping in one, and squinting over toward the fire, the coffee was already on the boil. – La Vereda del Monte