This morning I woke around 6:15 am, a little bit earlier than some of the others at the American Legion. I took the time to walk around town before things opened, and to plan how the day might proceed.

First stop after packing up at the Legion was Julian Cafe and Bakery. This place has a great menu and, like most places I’ve seen here, offers free refills on coffee. While there with the others who stayed at the Legion, Lucy & Tiger made a surprise entrance. They’d camped near the trail head last night, and hitched into town this morning. Some decent miles must have been pulled to catch up after their Mt Laguna zero mile day.

We spent the day running around Julian finishing our resupply. First to the gear store upstairs, which ironically has the best selection and prices for food. Then to the cider mill, which offers packaged bags of nuts, dried fruit, and candy; perfect for making scroggin. Then to the small grocery store for half a pound of Swiss cheese, and finally to the large grocery store to grab a steak for the trail. I got the last one, and it’s another 1 pound monster.

After doubling my pack weight with food and water, there was enough time for lunch at the brewery before our 3pm ride out of town. Unbelievably, while we were there, Tina, who we had to leave on day 3 at Lake Morena walked in. We were all excited to catch up and talk about how things were going, good thing they stopped when they did and let the ankle heal up.

Our shuttle left from the gear store at 3pm to take us out to the trail head. There was a whole network of trail angels who were running an organized operation to bring hikers into town, and take them back to the trailhead. The amazing work these legends do makes it so much easier for us to access remote towns which would normally require hitchhiking and a bit of luck.

From the trail head, we had a long climb up from the valley floor, about 250m elevation gain to camp. We’d decided to do a near-o today, that is, a near zero mile day. With heavily resupplied packs, these two miles up to camp were still not easy.

The desert seemed to have stepped up a level now. Barrel cacti had appeared and the landscape seemed even drier somehow. Within just one hour I saw two rattlesnakes on the trail. The desert is about to become more serious in the coming days.

After making camp, I cook grilled tortillas for dinner, and settled down to sleep.