A few days ago, Lindsie and I officially walked across California and have now reached Nevada.

If it’s ok with you, I’d like to write that one more time. Lindsie and I have officially walked across California and have now reached Nevada. After just a little over 3 weeks, we’ve crossed our first state, and we are so thankful that God has helped us make it across completely safe and sound.

Anyway, here’s an update on what has gone on since our last post.

We left the Prestons in South Lake Tahoe, CA, on Saturday morning, and Cynthea was kind enough to drive our carts up to the top of Spooner Summit so we wouldn’t have to push them up the not-that-enjoyable incline. We dropped the carts off at a state park with the hope that we would pick them up upon arrival and camp in the park.

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to camp in that specific area of the park. We were told that the camping area is 2.5 miles from where we entered, and you have to go through rougher “backcountry” and hiking trails to get to the campsites. That meant no carts, and no place to sleep.

We decided to roll with it anyway, knowing we’d maybe have to try and push to Carson City that same day, which would make for a 30-mile day total. We weren’t thrilled about that idea, but if it had to happen, we’d make it happen. At worst, we’d camp on the side of the highway. After a 15-mile uphill climb (without the carts, thankfully), we arrived back to where we’d dropped the carts off that morning. It was 4:30 pm and the park rangers were supposed to be gone for the day. We also still had 15 miles to go, and we were pretty much dead already.

Then we decided to pray.

If you’ve read some of our other posts, you’ve probably recognized that answered prayers are becoming a blessedly common thing for us on this journey, and you won’t be surprised to learn that, once again, our prayer was answered.

After praying that God would provide us with some safe place to sleep that night, we sat for about a minute. Then, a park official walked out of the seemingly-closed down ranger station and told us we could go ahead and camp in a restricted area reserved for a research group. It was just a few hundred feet away from us AND it had a bear box so we could keep our food (and ourselves) safe from bears.

Like I said, it was an answered prayer, and we were incredibly appreciative.

From there, we pushed our way (downhill, thankfully) to Carson City. We met with Ted Oxborrow, who is the Nevada State Coordinator for the American Discovery Trail, on the way down (he was riding uphill on his bike). Ted has been an amazing, incredible resources to us as we prepare for this desert crossing. But we’ll get to that later. For now, Ted mentioned that he’d dropped a line to Jenny Scanland, the State Trails Coordinator for Nevada.

Jenny and her husband, Rob, were AMAZING. Besides offering us their guest room/apartment for a few nights, they let us use their Xterra, they made us dinner, they took us swimming in the river behind their house, and they took us to their respective Tuesday morning Bible studies. Add that to the fact that Jenny knows a TON about the various parks, trails, and general environment here in Nevada, and you can see why we were so blessed to have met her (and Rob) in the first place.

We basically felt like family immediately after meeting them, and couldn’t be more thankful for everything they did to help us prepare for the desert. With some truly knowledgeable and experienced insight from the Scanlands as well as Ted Oxborrow, his wife, Jill, and his son, Trevor, we feel more prepared than we ever would’ve dreamed we could be as we get ready to set out across the deserts of Nevada and Utah.

Obviously the desert is going to have plenty of challenges. The main challenge will be staying hydrated and trying our best to fight off the heat. All we ask of you is prayer. Lots and lots of prayer. Prayers that we will always have enough water (even if it means road angels stop and drop water off for us), prayers that we’ll stay safe on a pretty lonely stretch of road, and prayers that we won’t have to walk through any out of-the-ordinary heat waves.

We are very, very confident that we will be perfectly safe. We’ve got complete faith that God will continue to walk with us every step of the way. But that doesn’t mean we’re not open to plenty of prayers and words of encouragement.

Thanks to everyone for following along with the journey. The udpates might be fewer and further between once we hit the desert, but we’ll do our best to keep you as up-to-date as possible.

On a final note, don’t forget to check out the wonderful story Jill Callison from the Argus Leader wrote about our trip. It was fun doing the interview and we’re overjoyed with the story she wrote about us. It’s such a blessing to be able to share with people the what and why of our journey, especially through a paper as wide-reaching as the Argus Leader.

Thanks again, everyone, and we’ll be back with another update as soon as we can be.

-Mike and Lindsie