Miles 5.5 Bonus miles to the cafe 1 PCT Mile 151.8 It’s going to be sunny and beautiful today, Anji said. I can’t wait! I looked out of my tent at the rain cloud enveloping us. Oh, I said. It’s gonna rain in 3….2….1…. crap. Our fingers turned red with the cold as we stuffed our wet tents one more time into their bags. I pressed my fingers to my face to warm them for Read more…
Miles 11.6 PCT Mile 146.4 The wind grabbed my tent and shook it in its teeth. I was a ragdoll. FLAPFLAPFLAPFLAP said my tent. The rain smacked it around and I Cowered a little bit. It was barely midnight. A long six more hours of that ensued and it was finally time to try to get out of the tents. We put together a whole plan. Anji packed up her tent, leaving the rain fly Read more…
Miles 13.9 PCT Mile 134.8 Anji says I smell earthy. We all know what that means. We’d been hiking uphill for hours. The views filled with layers upon layers of mountains beyond. Some hills red, mostly dark green, some little corners covered in bright green grass. We’d been carrying 5.5 liters of water with us. We decided to skip the infamous Mike’s Place, which was a water stop, and opted to filter water from a Read more…
Miles 11.4 PCT Mile 120.9 It was 6pm, the sun was behind the hill, it was really cold, and I wasn’t wearing any pants. We started the morning by getting our wet tents packed up, the marine layer slowly burning off once again, and tried to take a shortcut to the post office. We hopped a fence and found an old trail through the closed golf course. We took it and wandered around and got Read more…
Miles 6.9 PCT Mile 109.5 The marine layer just did not want to burn off. Our tents were soaked from the misty morning, and the sun couldn’t find its way through. We shook out our tents the best we could, packed them up sopping wet, and were on our way. Just in time for the marine layer to burn off… We crawled around on the hillsides in the same old brush for a short while Read more…
Miles 10.9 Bonus Miles .2 PCT Mile 102.1 It was a bear of a night. Calm, then blasts of rain, then some more calm, then wind so hard we were quite certain it would pull our rainflies away into the night sky. Then quiet. When it was really time to get up, the worst of it had passed and it was a beautiful dawn. Anji took pics, of course. She’s always snapping away at this Read more…
Miles 9.6 Bonus Miles .2 PCT Mile 91.2 We got a late start. After all, I wanted to blog for a while and Anji was snoring her sweet little snore, so I let her sleep in. The clouds were all swirly gray and black with a bright blue behind and I took some photos, all artistic and stuff, of the tents with the dramatic sky. I finally got her up when the clouds looked like Read more…
Miles 4.3 PCT Mile 81.6 We gathered our belongings and were ready when Professor showed up in his Subaru to collect us and take us back to Julian. So soft-spoken, I nearly had my head in the front seat with Anji just to try to hear him. Finally I gave up and let her be the conversationalist. She’s really good at that. Mom’s Pies gives out a slice of pie and a drink to PCT Read more…
Mileage 5.6 PCT Mile 77.3 I dreamed I was at Urgent Care with my mom, and I had poison oak on the bottoms of my feet. How did we get here, I asked her. It doesn’t matter honey, she said, we’re here now. I woke up in agony, crying. My toes hurt so much. I willed my toenails to just fall off already. We slept in fits and spurts until 6. We were on trail Read more…
Mileage 12.2 PCT Mile 71.7 If rocks didn’t weigh so much, I’d have twelve of them in my pocket already, Anji said. Look how pretty they are! She moved down the trail with a long, smooth gait. Confident and in control. I liked following behind her. She sees everything and stops to take photos of all sorts of neat things. Cacti, and ice swirls in the sand, and rocks that strike her fancy. I just Read more…