“Hello! I am currently in Julian, and I am making this phone post from a trail angel's house. Apparantly, along the route, there are folks -- sometimes, usually fellow hikers, as with Shari here, who will just extend the kindness of their homes to, and hospitality to, the strangers hiking through on the trail.
As it was, I basically caught a ride in to Julian, which is about 78 miles from the southern border. So I've been *laugh* hiking out here about a week. But I caught a ride in to Julian. And Shari saw me in the post office, recognized me as a thru-hiker, and hauled me home for a shower, hot meal, and doing my laundry. And has been offering me use of her phone as well. So I've had quite the magical little day, here.
The hiking so far has largely been great. The trail has been graded a lot easier than I expected. On the other hand, I've been developing some foot blisters, and I had one on my left heel pop, actually. Which has been kind of a downer. Hiking on it has been a little bit painful, but I've managed to keep it infection-free so far.
And I actually spent all of yesterday -- I got up in the morning expecting [just to hike] five or six miles, just to the next water source. It turned out that the water source was 10 miles, and then I had dinner there, and I felt great, so I kept going. I ended up hiking 19 miles on [the open blister], which is my longest day yet. But still, I should be resting on it a little bit more. And so, that's why I was going to go ahead and bail out into town for today. And, uh, voila. Look at all this wonderful stuff that's occurring.
Uh, anyway, the hiking has been great. Posting is going to be a little bit weird because, at the moment, my cell phone is in the mail to Warner Springs. It accidentally got sent home with <lj user=kadyg>, instead of, you know, packed into my bag. So I can't exactly make voice posts with that, until I get it. And phone cards apparently don't work very well with LiveJournal's voice post system, because LJ requires you to hit # at a couple of times when you're entering in your data. And when you do that on a phone card, it will hang up the phone for you. Which I found out trying to make a post back in Mount Laguna.
So I will probably not be talking much until, maybe, I get my phone in Warner Springs. And if I get cell coverage there, I might be able to give folks a little bit more of an update.
Otherwise, what's going on is, yeah, I'm pretty much just hiking, and keeping a paper journal, which Kady will transcribe in later. So, the details of my trip thus far are largely going to be reaching you guys in a couple of weeks, once everything gets sorted out with the mail, and she gets everything settled with typing it in. Anyway, I hope you are all doing well out in the Land of the Internets [sic], and I am having a good time out on the trail.
It's been a real adventure so far -- would not be missing this for the world. And hopefully I can catch up to some of y'all along the way, and otherwise I will try and stay in touch. Y'all take care.”
lupagreenwolf convinced me to hit the trail one…