Earthwalk Day 1320 (3 September 2025), 13,199 km: Old Woman meteorite

I’m at the end of Leg 50. There doesn’t appear to be much here, mainly because there isn’t much here. Nothing to see, really; but this spot, in the flat desert, is as close as Google Maps’ walking directions will get me to the discovery site, up over there in the Old Woman Mountains, of the Old Woman meteorite. We saw that rock back in June on display at the Desert Discovery Center. If I were really here, maybe I could hike cross country and climb up to the actual discovery site — or maybe I couldn’t — and either way, there probably still wouldn’t be much there to see. Instead I can stand here, virtually, and virtually look around and virtually say “OK, this is kinda near the place, huh” and then virtually move on.

Tomorrow. For once I ended a leg and a day’s walking almost simultaneously. Actually I went out for today’s walk and when I got back I discovered I was still about 700 m short of the goal. Bugger that, I thought, and went back out for another km.

August was okay. There were a few rain days and a few morris dancing days when I didn’t get much walking in; average steps per day was once again a good deal lower than normal. But I did do five bike rides, same as Augusts 2024 and 2022 (though there were eight in August 2023), and they averaged a little longer than the August 2024 rides and a lot longer than the 2022–3 ones, so my average daily distance came out closely clustered with that of all three previous Augusts.

A map showing my progress is here, a spreadsheet with progress detail is here, and a Google Earth KMZ file is in this Google Drive folder. Present coordinates: 34.482°N, 115.250°W.