After my first solo camping, I headed out into the hot dusty desert. It got warm fast and I was low on water. I had four miles to go before the first water source and made the mistake of eating some beef jerky in the morning. I ran out of water on the side trail to the spring. I filtered a couple liters of water for the rest of my day and kept on hiking. The water tasted like iron.
Later, in the heat of the day, I came upon a water cache and was excited to replace my water with something that tasted better. The cache was empty.
I kept on hiking when I found Walden. Walden is a little oasis managed by a local trail angel that celebrates Thoreau and Whitman. It even has a Little Free Library, where you can trade books. I sat there and snacked while I dried my tent from the previous nights condensation.
That’s when Shoe showed up. He was desperate for water and said there was supposed to be water here. I hadn’t seen any, but after some investigation we found a large cistern of cold water. I chugged my gross water and replaced it with the new good water.
That was enough to get me to my final destination, Paradise Valley Cafe. They’re hiker friendly and will even let you camp out on their porch. When I arrived at the Cafe, I was the only hiker there. The waitress actually said I looked too clean to be a hiker. She hadn’t gotten close enough to smell me yet. I ordered a burger and a coke and enjoyed my cell phone service.
Then everyone showed up. Almost everyone I had talked to in the last few days showed up all at once. I had planned on sleeping there, but a few of us decided to hike the mile back to the trail and put in a few miles at night. The weather was perfect for hiking and it was cool watching the sun set in the desert.
The next section of trail goes on for about 15 miles before it closes due to a forest fire a few years ago. Lots of people skipped from the cafe straight to Idyllwild, but we hiked to the closure. From the closure, we took an old dirt road back to the highway where we hitchhiked into town.
First thing we did was go get pizza. We had met a girl on the trail a few days earlier who was obsessed with getting pizza in Julian, and that is how we felt all day.
After finishing our pizzas, we bought our food for the next few days and then took a much needed shower. I walked in with my clothes on and soaped them up. A simple way of doing the laundry.
We met up with most of the people from the day before at the cafe and hung out at the campground in town. Tomorrow, we summit Mt San Jacinto.