It was a cold day this morning, I decided after waking up at 3am that I would book a room in Julian as a little treat and a little mission.
I put on my rain pants and rain jacket to cut the wind and hiked out at 9am - the weather forecast was for a cooler day so there wasn’t a big need to hike early in the day to beat the heat.
It was super windy and cloudy to start - after a few hours the sun burned off the fog/clouds and it turned into an absolutely stunning day, and off came the rain jacket and pants and back into normal shorts and sun shirt.
The day was spent walking along spectacular mountainside, looking over at Granite mountain and seeing the slopes go down to the desert floor, and large expansive views that reminded me of the ancient glacier carved mountains of the ranges on the Larapinta trail in Australia. With the occasional sign reminding us again how far we are from Canada and other landmarks. Also a memorial site, I’m not sure why it was there for all these people, but it was on the side of the mountain and was rather striking.
Oh, and absolutely gorgeous flowers. We are so lucky at the moment - normally by this time of year the flowers are all gone but we’ve still got so many, and also so much water. This is because of the record snow and rainfall in these areas. Just a month or two earlier and these were snow covered. Imagine that!
I came across some other hikers eventually - one of them hiking with his dog. Very cute dog. After filling up water at a slightly questionable looking water source (ended up being totally fine!), I hiked on through windy weather until I bumped into Graham and JJ. We spent the night at a nice campsite at mile 63. We had a lovely evening and headed to bed to set out early to make it to Scissor Crossing, Mike 77, before the heat got too strong.
