Legs and Borders

"My Polish father was very religious that's why he called me Stefan" Stefan Wyszyński aka Calves. "I would not believe if someone told me year ago that I will be sitting under a bridge drinking beer with a bunch of weirdos" Andrew. It was an absolutely horrific night, wind was howling and then around 3am it started to rain. Rangel dropped us off at the campsite at the Stagecoach RV and pointed to "the best spot" but it didn't help much, if not the shower facilities I would consider my 10$ wasted. It was still raining in the morning when I was packing up, but at least we've been greeted with the rainbow. Then I pointlessly spent 20 minutes on the toilet while the phone was charging by the sink. We waited as agreed yesterday with Rangel at 7:30 by the entrance to RV, but he didn't turn up. By 8:00 I lost hope and decided to catch first hitchhike in my life. To be fair someone already offered me a ride at 7:20, but Tom wasn't there yet so ...

"I bought the rain pants, but I cut them into shorts" Micro Bear. Initial plan today was to walk 16 miles but we ended up pushing few extra ones as we arrived at our destination quite early, at 3pm. Other hikers told us that what appeared to be a picnic site on the GPS map was frequently used by hikers to stay for the night, so we followed the advice and tonight we are camping at "Pioneer Mail Picnic Site" :) We started hiking quite early around 6am and at 11am we arrived at the town called Mount Laguna (the last town before Julian at mile 75). We had a meal there (burger and chips of course), did some resupplying and chilled out before doing another 10 miles in the afternoon. The weather was hot but it was really windy all day. We made a bet at which mile we will see a rattlesnake, Tom said 25 I said 37, we both lost.. no rattlesnakes in sight, which isn't the bad thing :) When we arrived at the camp, the surprise was awaiting, Jasper the Swedish guy I met in t...

"To pick a guy American girls are going by the 666 rule. Six numbers in bank account, six inches in your pants and six feet hight." Kerry, the bus driver. "And six different accents." Stefan Wyszyński aka Calves. Today we hiked 23 miles to Julian one of the few little towns the trail goes next to across the dessert. We are staying in Stagecoach RV located few miles away from the town as all the accomodation in Julian has been booked, so the plan is to hitchhike there tomorrow morning do some resupplying and hit the trail again around midday. Hiking through the dessert was quite enjoyable today, cactus are blooming, the wind from yesterday was almost gone and the weather was good, no rattlesnakes in sigh, a lot of prairie dogs, crows and even few chipmunks. We hit a major trail magic once we arrived at the Scissors Crossing in Julian, couple of hikers under the bridge drinking beer from the cache, we joined in for a conversation and a can. Turned out that one of the ...

"I told my gal that I will see her on Tuesday, but I didn't tell her which one it's going to be" Salty. I've been awoken today by the sounds of whispering and rustling, people we've been sharing camp with decided to start packing really early but since it was just half an hour until my alarm would go off I decided to start packing as well. I woke up Tom, and we've been ready to go by 6:30. It was a fairly steep hike to Lake Morena, we managed to arrive there by 11:30, and ordered 'breakfast' which for me was a burger with chips and coffee. That's where the day got interesting, after ordering coffee latte, I couldn't find a button for it in self service machine, so I went for mocha instead. Mocha turned out to be a white coffee with cinnamon. In the meantime one of the other hikers offered if someone wants to finish their toast, I said sure I'll eat it, the toast has been sprinkled with cinnamon.. at this point I started to complain that...

"Why would you even hike there? It's only rocks and dust" Kerry, the bus driver. So it has begun! And of course not much went as planned :) First of all Jasper stayed at the hostel as he was still not feeling well (stomach issues) so I ended up going to El Cajon on my own. Got picked up by the 894 driver an hour early as he was going through the bus station to the first bus stop and Wallmart, his name was Kerry and he didn't stop talking to me for the next two hours. He was an absolute character, he claimed that he spend 10 years in prison for a bank robbery, got out in 2007, been homeless for a year and then landed himself a job as a bus driver. He gets paid 22$ an hour, he also got into some kind of accident for which he got paid a large sum of money he used to buy a house in Lake Morena, he was also quite keen to show me naked pictures of his girlfriend, he stood by the right of owning a gun (which he can't have now as a convict) as a way of protecting yourself...