100 miles!
Today we left Julian around 7 in the morning and walked over to the local school and post office to try to get a hitch to the trail head. Car after car, and no one picked us up. 45 minutes later, a nice lady stopped with her pickup truck and brought us to the trail head. She is planning on doing the trail in a couple years, and is actually one of the chefs in a nearby restaurant. She agreed with our thoughts that the town's food was touristy and not AMAZING. We still enjoyed having real food, so all is well. The pasta we had with Mark and Angela served us well, and the left overs made dinner the next night, too.
We finally made it to the trail and started to hike. Soon into it, we passed a couple of hikers who told us that the water cache in 13 miles was empty. This was a 24 mile stretch without water, and people come and bring water jugs to the trail in the middle. Unfortunately we couldn't partake of that kindness, so decided to hike the full 24 miles. As we got up the mountain, a guy yelled up to us. He was holding a few jugs of water. By that point the decision was made, and our water supply was good.
We hiked on in beautiful weather -- perfect temperature, sun not too harsh, and the terrain was great. Part way through, a little bunny hopped into the trail and scared the living daylights out of us all (bunny included), as we were not prepared for a creature to jump out into the trail. In a heartbeat (which was racing very fast) it turned around and ran back. We gathered ourselves from this near-death killer bunny encounter, and hiked on.
The hike was pretty uneventful, but great. We enjoyed it very much and did the full 24 in good shape. Right before the campsite, we broke 100 miles! Excited to get the first mile marker. However, it's daunting to know the next number to get excited about is 500.
We made it into camp, saw that the water source (a concrete tub) was full of tadpoles, and set up camp. We took as little water as needed, and will resupply our drinking water up the trail. We also saw a cooler of goodies, opened it, and found nothing. We were bummed, but so it goes. Ten minutes later a guy walked into the campsite with a cooler and soda! Grumpy (the guy's trail name) drove up 100 miles (note: that took him an hour and a half.... Took us a week) to resupply his little soda cache. We started talking to him and he gave us some good info about the trail and what to expect up the road.
After he left, we finished dinner, had a soda, and got into bed. We will sleep well tonight after our first 20+ mile day!
--Ian
