What a night!!!!

We knew the weather had been bad, we didn’t know that it was going to get worse, wind gusting 50-60 miles an hour. Then there was a rain squall that we didn’t know about until it soaked through my sleeping bag and woke me up. It turned out that our rain fly broke partway off and was just flapping around so much that it frayed the strings attaching it to our tent.

Al went out there and temporarily fixed it. Everything soaked again!! Everything! Including Allen. We just crawled back into our wet sleeping bags and tried to get more sleep until morning. Al had to hang on to the main tent pole while lying inside the tent because he thought the pole might break in the wind. His hand would get so cold that I would hold it and blow onto it until the other hand got too cold and he would then switch hands. I kept on waking up realizing that I had somehow fallen asleep and he was still hanging on to that ice cold pole!

In the morning the wind was still blowing so we hung everything out on bushes waiting for the sun to reach us.

We only hike about 4 miles today before we get to a trail junction where we could walk out to the highway. We walk out and hitch and get picked up almost right away by the professor, he is another great Trail Angel out here.

We arrive in Julian and the professor tells us he will return us to the trail when we are ready. He then recommends a few places to us and drops us off.

We register into the Julian Hotel and drop our backpacks we can’t check in for a few hours. We go off to explore the town. We stop at Moms Pie House first, they offer every PCT through hiker a free slice of pie with ice cream and a drink. Al goes with classic apple pie I choose Apple berry with cinnamon ice cream. Delicious!!

Then off to the post office on the edge of town. We get a big priority box and bring it back to the hotel. It’s now time to check in. After check in we shower! Bliss! We then fill the box with all the stuff we realize we really don’t want or need to carry to Canada. Then back to the post office.

We decide to stay two days, I fell twice now and my knee is complaining. There’s a lot to see here and we are not in a rush.

Tomorrow’s another day,

Until then, Be Well