Day 4 - May 1

Cowboy camping at Scissors Crossing (mile 77.3). Walked 15.8 miles today.

Woke up feeling rested and refreshed only to see the time was 10pm...yikes. Managed to fall back to sleep but had a restless night. Emily got up about 5 am and I was only half awake when she let out a gasp. That's one of the last noises you want to hear at 5 am. Turns out that the ants had invaded our camp. They weren't crawling on us, but they were between our gear.  We packed up hastily to escape them and were on the trail about 5:30, just in time for a beautiful sunrise.

Walked downhill for a while at first and then back uphill. We saw Desert Flower and a few others as we walked along. It was slow going for Emily today as she has blisters on the bottom of her feet and is struggling. I would walk ahead of her and then stop after a while to let her catch up.  I suggested "Castilleja" as a trail name for her (the genus for Indian paintbrush since that's her favorite flower and she seems to know a lot of genus and species names of plants). She said she'd thought about that but it might be difficult for people to pronounce.

We wove around the mountains, staying fairly flat for most of the morning before walking along some cliff-like areas.

The trail eventually dropped down to the desert floor and we had a nearly 3 mile walk along the hot desert floor.

There was a little wind which helped the temp not feel quite as hot. After a while, we were overtaken by 3 other hikers and we followed them in to scissors crossing which is an underpass with a large water cache where some trail angels had provided cold soda and water for hikers. They were also shuttling hikers to Julian and back. Emily, myself, and another hiker, Lost and Found, were driven up to Julian by trail angel Rebecca, aka The Fossil Lady, who does some volunteer paleontology work in Anza Borego (hence her alias). She told us that there aren't any rooms available as it's Saturday in the popular tourist town, but that there was camping behind a brewery or at the Stagecoach RV park, 4 miles south of scissors crossing. We got to the town and went to the local outfitter. I got enough food to get to Warner Springs and also got a new water filter because mine isn't working well, even after back flushing it. The girls got some Leukotape for their blisters and then Lost and Found and I went to Mom's for some apple pie while Emily stayed behind to treat her wounds. The apple-cherry pie that I had was fantastic and the business is an awesome supporter of the trail and PCTA. Emily joined us and we all talked for a bit before loitering around different spots in the town: on benches outside the grocery, next to the bathrooms, you know, typical hiker hangout spots. Emily embraced her inner hiker trash and did her dishes in the storm drain.

 Lost and Found saw on her phone that one store offered free cider to hikers so we went there and got some and a little bag of candy as well. Emily suggested her trail name should be "No Whey" after buying a pack of expensive tortillas and realizing they had milk in them (she's Vegan). We all agreed it was a good name. At 5 pm, we got a ride back down from Julian. Rebecca informed us that the first wildfire of the season had just started 20 miles south of scissors crossing. There had been a lot of fire vehicle activity in town, but I hadn't thought anything of it at the time.

Rebecca dropped us off at the Stagecoach RV park where we took hot showers and did laundry (i.e. washed our clothes in the shower) with plans to camp at the park and get up at 4am to either road walk or hitch back to scissors crossing. After some discussion, the three of us decided to not camp here but to try to hitch hike back to scissor crossing and camp there tonight. After maybe or maybe not getting our money back by questionably legal means, we started walking the road and throwing out the thumb.

The first vehicle that stopped was a fire worker who told us that we were unlikely to get a ride as the road was closed farther down (due to the fire) and people wouldn't be coming by. This proved to be BS because several cars came by and the 5th one picked us up (as the light was fading) and took us to the crossing. It was a guy who lived in the area near the fire and the police weren't letting him in since it was in the evacuation area. We found a spot to camp and tried to set up tents but the wind was pretty vicious and the tent stakes were getting ripped out of the sand. Only Emily got hers up. Lost and Found and I are cowboy camping tonight. Emergency vehicles keep passing on the road on their way to control the fire. We have all our clothes laid out trying to dry from their washing and are hanging out in our rain gear. Overall, quite a day that didn't go at all how we thought it would, but all worked out in the end.