April and Jeff Hike North America

Monday May 18th We stay in our air bnb until check out time, even though we intended to leave earlier. It’s pretty hard to get an early start when you’re not already on the trail. We look out windows and the sky is still clear, but clouds increase as the time passes. Last night the weather man told us there’d be a little storm, but that it had no power and would blow out by the afternoon. We consider staying again, but decide that’s just us being lazy, and force ourselves to go! We walk back up the hill through the neighborhood and as we go along it begins to rain. We take out our umbrellas, but the wind begins to blow and the umbrellas aren’t enough. A local man who is about to pull out of his driveway lets us take refuge in his garage for a moment while we don our rain gear. We consider again turning back, but it’s not that bad and the weather man says it will blow out! We climb the switchbacks back up to the ridge and enter a cloud bank. It’s howling wind and rain is blowin...

Leisure is had today. We have homemade pancake breakfast, sort food, go to the coffee shop and take walks. In the afternoon it is time for my mom to drive back to San Diego. We enjoy Wrightwood and our apartment so much that we wish we could stay another day and dream of coming back again.    I request my mom mix up all the dry ingredients for cornmeal packages at home and bring along the wet ingredients so we could have pancakes for breakfast with peanut butter syrup and berries. It was very convenient that the kitchen had an electric griddle! Downtown Wrightwood and the vibrant spring time growth on the trees. Sightseeing  Jeff and Luna  Enjoying more food on our balcony, grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches on great harvest bread! Great Harvest is a bakery chain in the west that makes the best bread! My Mom’s truck outside the grocery store with the ridge the the PCT follows in the background  There goes my Mom and Luna, back down the highway  Mor...

Saturday 5/16 Our neighbors are gone by the time we wake  up. We had wanted to see the sunrise and peek out of the tent to seeing a glowing pink and orange sky around 5:45 but sleep lures us back in and we doze awhile longer. We are in no rush today. When we finally do wake up we eat our final food items, 2 Bob’s Red Mill dried fruit, nut and oats bars each with extra peanut butter on top. We are packed up and walking by about 8:30. We have some easy flat walking in the pine forest on the top of the ridge before we reach the Acorn Trail junction and begin the descent into town. We chose this trail as our access to Wrightwood because it leads you right into town. Most other hikers keep going to where the trail crosses Highway 2, the Angeles Crest Highway at a busy viewpoint called Inspiration Point. From there they hitchhike to town, since walking any extra, especially on a “steep” trail like the Acorn Trail is out of the question. The only problem is that right now the highway is s...

Friday 5/15 We wait until morning to get water from the cache since we had enough to get us through the night. I stay at the campsite while Jeff goes over to get the water. It it less than a minute walk. Jeff saw a hiker go by just a few minutes before, and when he arrives to the cache that hiker was squatted down pooping within view of the cache! Jeff grabs one of the water jugs and walks away with it to give the guy some privacy. Shortly after, another guy shows up. Both guys are super ultra light backpackers, and one of them is just hiking a section and hasn’t brought any sleeping gear! Apparently in that situation, you just walk until you’re exhausted and lay down where ever until you get too cold and then you get up and walk again! The two hikers begin to brag back and forth about who could be more ultra light and Jeff uses that opportunity to slip away. We will have no access to water all day, so we stock  up to near capacity, 9 liters. With our food weight so low, we barely ...

Thursday 5/14 We cruise up and over and down little hills until we reach the final descent into civilization, with sweeping views of the Cajon Pass valley. We see the busy interstate 15 freeway and highway 138 winding into the mountains. We also see a busy train track and have been hearing the trains since last night. I have probably ridden in a car through Cajon Pass dozens of times in my life, but never experienced it like this, from a wilderness perspective and probably not in spring either. All of the surrounding slopes are covered in wildflowers giving the hills a neon green and yellow hue. To my delight, this color does not come predominantly from invasive mustard plants like I had always thought when viewing the hillsides of Southern California from a car. Many native plants, especially deer weed are responsible for the color!  Adding to the beauty, we can see across the highway to the San Gabriel mountains, and the snowy Mt Baldy. We stop for a snack and to admire the view,...