We had a great evening staying with trail angels Mary Poppins and Roar last night. They live about a mile outside of town so we headed in their direction mid afternoon and met Yote and Nicole at Nickel Beer Brewery which was conveniently right on the way. The brewery was super cool, great beer and all locals except for us and a new hiker friend, Crash, from Australia. He is doing an 8 month trip where he is hiking the PCT as well as a couple of other long trails. Yote invited him to stay at the trail Angels as well so the five of us headed over there around 530. We enjoyed delicious baked spaghetti for dinner and relaxed talking and watching a movie. In the morning we had cereal and toast and coffee (I got to have my much-adored Cheerios) and chatted with Mary Poppins before heading out around 830 to hitch back to the trail.
Most cars were heading into town rather than in the direction of the trail, but after about 30 minutes, Yote, Nicole, Wolf Bird and I scored a ride with a woman named Kim (Crash had gotten off at a different point on the trail and was headed back there himself). The two back seats in Kim’s van had booster seats for her kids so I enjoyed sitting on one while we cruised around hairpin turns down the mountain.
We arrived at the trail at Scissors Crossing around 10am. We were a bit nervous and curious how crowded the trail would be with so many people having stayed in Julian to wait out the storm. We had 14 miles to go for the day until our first water source. Wolf Bird and I set out and had a good pace all morning, passing many groups of hikers. It was fun to see everyone and chat briefly. We were in cruise mode–it was sunny but much cooler than other days and with a nice breeze so it was easy to get a good pace going. We went uphill for nearly the entire morning and ended up getting to the water source around 2ish with only a brief 5-10 minute break!
There were many hikers hanging out around where the water was. This particular source was a water cache–volunteers drive in gallon jugs of water for hikers. We walked downhill and off trail about 0.4 miles to reach the cache. It was crazy the amount of water there for hikers! It is truly humbling and awe inspiring to know that complete strangers will spend their time and money making sure we have water here (otherwise it would be 20 mile plus waterless section).
After we loaded up with water and enjoyed a long break and lunch we set out for our afternoon miles. We were still feeling great–it must have been that two days of rest! I allowed myself a special treat and put in my headphones to listen to music, something I hadn’t done yet on this trail but did often on the AT. It was amazing how motivated and energized listening to music made me feel! The miles were flying by and when we got to a campsite we’d thought about stopping at a few miles out, we both agreed we wanted to keep walking!
We committed to another 10 miles and ended up passing the 100 mile mark! We pulled a 24 mile day and surprisingly felt pretty great when we arrived at camp.
There were about 15 other hikers already set up in the area we were camping. It was crazy because we hadn’t met any of them before–I guess we broke into a new bubble. We cooked dinner –wolf bird cooked a double dinner and ended up eating it on a log alone well into dusk after everyone else went to bed.