Mile 77

I'm sure you all have been at the edge of your seats, checking back hourly, eagerly waiting another post to let you know how we are. Well the wait is over! We have been without internet for a while. Strangly, the mountains don't have very good WiFi. But we just hitched into a little town called Julian, which luckily had a library we could use. Because we haven't really posted anything about our trip yet, we are going to do something a little different and Jesse and I are both going to just write about our experience so far, so there may be some overlap, but that's just something you'll have to deal with.

I guess I'll start where we left off, at the hostel. We ended up being able to go to the zoo, it turned out to be a beautiful day to spend at a beautiful zoo. It was deffinitely a world class place. They also happened to sell big goofy straw hats, exactly the hiking hat I wanted. So I am now hiking in style.

When we got back to the hostel we met 2 fellow PCT hikers, Wannes and Tyler, both awesome guys who have been hiking with us since and hopefully will be for some time to come... But we will get to the actual hike soon. That night was one for the books. We set off for a pubcrawl put on by the hostel, which ended up being just a bunch of us going to the bar downstairs, but it was still great. We ended up at some local guys house. A guy too strange to even put into words, but after playing with his giant hamster wheel for his cats, watching the spy movie trailers he put together about them and learning about his crippling poor history with women, we had a night we will never be able to fully describe, but will never forget.

The next day we set out for Campo, the beginning of the trail, it looked like a war zone with the high metal fences, barbed wire and army of border gaurds trying to keep Mexico in Mexico and America in America. But we treked on. After a few hours of night hiking and a few hours the next day, we made it to the kick off party that gets thrown for the hikers each year. It was amazing, hundreds of hikers to talk to, things to learn and free food to eat. Plus alcohol is cheap here in America, and with a store just a few minutes away, it made for a good weekend of campground camping.

Since then we've walked another 57 miles or so over the past few days. The sights we've been seeing are amazing, the scenery seems to change every time we climb a pass or around a ridge. The living is simple. It's amazing to go from a life full of gadgets and time wasting to having nothing to do but walk. Nothing to do but make it as far as you can, making sure to take a few hours around lunch to sleep in the sun, or have conversations with the people you meet. But then its back to walking, climbing up mountains then climbing back down (which is much, much worse than climbing up) taking it all in as you go.

Because everyone set off around the kick off at the same time, there is a realatively large pack of people all heading north around the same time. So we've had a lot of opportunities to meet new people from all over the place and they've all been pretty great. Our main crew is Jesse and I with our new friends Wannes, from Belgium and Tyler who says he's from North Dakota but seems to travel so much it'd be hard for him to call one place home. On top of our main crew there is a group of about 20 or so who we regularly see on the trail or camp with at night. As time goes on the pack will split up I'm sure. But for now I'm really enjoying the comradery of the experience.

I should probably stop here, it's hard to describe everything we've been seeing and doing. But with this novel I've been writing and Jesse's on top of it, you'll have a lot to read. I'm not sure when we'll be able to update this again, but stay tuned.

Happy Trails,
Mike