Day 3 - April 30

Cowboy Camping at mile 61.5.  Walked 22.1 miles today.

Slept well for a few hours then a restless sleep for the rest of the night.  Woke a little after 5 and Emily and I were on the trail by 6:15.  We realized that the 0.4 mile spur trail that we took yesterday to get to the campsite paralleled the PCT so we were only about 100 yards off the trail.  As a result, we bushwhacked over to the trail meaning we actually skipped about 0.4 miles of the trail.  I'm not concerned about missing that bit.  I still have a continuous footpath and I know there are other as sections of the trail up ahead where I won't follow the official route.  Started out as a gentle climb up to Mt. Laguna.

On the way, Emily suggested that we camp about mile 59 tonight, meaning a 20 mile day today.

"We."

I guess that means we're sticking together.  Hadn't planned on doing this many 20 mile days right off the bat, but ok...let's go!

Both of us like to keep moving, so higher miles makes sense for us.  Had planned on resupplying at Mt. Laguna, but with eating dinner at the malt shop on day 1 and not eating as much as I thought I would, I should have enough food to make it to Julian at mile 77.

Passed through the forested area past some trees with massive pinecones (Coulter Pines as Google later told me).

Continued up the trail and reached a lookout point where a few non-hikers were enjoying the view.  One lady offered me an apple and I gladly accepted.  My first bit of trail magic.  It was a good apple too.  I shared with Emily when she walked up a minute later.

Shortly after we left the lookout point, we came across a couple of forest service rangers who asked if we had thru hike permits.  We had our packs halfway off but the ranger said he didn't need to see them, he just wanted to know if we had them.  We confirmed that we did and asked a few more questions before warning us that there had been a lot of rattlesnake sightings between this point and Rodriguez Spur Tank.  Continued on until we reached a picnic area where a lot of hikers were sitting around, eating lunch.  We joined them and rested for a while before getting some water and moving on.  From here, the scenery got ridiculously amazing.

The past few days have had good views, but these were excellent!  Walked with Emily and another hiker, Midnight, from Hawaii.  He's a bit of an over-sharer but interesting.   He's having some foot issues that I diagnosed as extensor tendonitis and told him how to treat it.  We walked quickly for 7 miles until we reached a 0.25 mile side trail to a trailhead with a brand new restocked water cache and some oranges.  It was the hottest day so far, so this was a welcome treat.  Met up with Desert Flower who seems like a cool guy.  He moved on after a bit, hoping to get a couple more hours of hiking in.  Emily and I had planned to stop near here for the night, but since it was only like 3:30 we pushed on another two miles after a short break at the cache.

Emily was a little slower as her feet are hurting.  Reached a campsite that was pretty windy, so we decided to cowboy camp here tonight rather than try to deal with tents.  Midnight turned up and he decided to tent camp.  While over near his site, Emily noticed some fire ants.  There weren't any near where we had set up so figured it was ok.  We chatted some with Midnight for a bit before turning in.  Tomorrow, the plan is to hike to scissors crossing and then hitch into Julian to spend the night in civilization before hitching out the following day.