Let’s see, since my last post i spent some time with family and friends, started revamping my diet and mom and i came home.
Before we came home my aunt did a test run on my moms make up for her wedding then did mine for fun. I told her to do whatever she wanted so she went dramatic.
Little different than my trail look huh? Hahahaha
Since i got home ive started working out again.
Insanity is crazy hard but i feel so great afterwards!
I’ve started eating more at home and making better food choices.
Post workout snack of edemame and a recovery shake.
I’ve also started gettng back into my spirituality, i have gotten some oracle cards to help focus me everyday.
And i have also started journaling to dig deeper into myself and my spirituality and to make sure my life goes in the direction i want it to.
I am enjoying eharmony. I already have a connection with someone, hopefully we can meet soon and see if that translates into real life, but im being smart and still talking to other people. This was something i wasn’t good at in the past, in the past i would feel a connection and focus solely on them, but that is not the healthiest way if doing things, especially when you are internet dating. I’m glad to see that i have grown.
Also the decision has been made of where i am going to live and the winner is……Portland!!!!!
I just loved the life i led and the person i became in Portland so i am going back.
Well its time to asses the situation. I let myself get a nice little belly when i came home to get ready for the trail. And some of my more toned muscles have turned back toward flab, now this wouldn’t have been a problem since i was going to walk for 6 months but since that version of the plan has gone out the window, its time for damage control.
This morning my grandmas scale said i weight 157lbs. Yikes! My goal, along with figuring out where to live and a job and you know all that small stuff hahahaha, i would like to get down to about 135-140 by the time i move in the beginning of July.
This is of course a rough estimate, if i get to 143 and im chocked full of tone and love the way i look, of course that will be good enough.
Mom and i are tweaking our Starbucks drinks to lower the calories. I went from a tall 2 shot carmel frapachino to a tall iced coffee with 1 pump mocha and 1 pump classic and a bit of cream. Im saving like 250 calories a drink. We love the reduced fat turkey bacon sandwich. Great kick of protein in the morning and not too bad considering its fast food like.
We walked the 1 mile from my grandmas down here and will walk it back. Well hobble in my case. My feet are protesting since yesterday afternoon, otherwise we would have added another mile or two to our walk, but gotta let my feet heal.
Im using the sparkpeople app on my phone to start tracking my calories.
These next few months will be interesting…….
Oh and i signed up on eharmany last night lol.
Talk to you soon!!!!
So i am off the trail. My thru-hiking adventure is over. I do want to section hike and some day complete the trail but i don’t want to do it alone.
I talked to hikers on the trail who said don’t worry you can hike alone all day and find people to hang with at night, but that wasn’t my issue, it was the hiking alone during the day that i didn’t want to do. I guess that is how i differ from your average thru-hiker.
So now i have to decided where i want to live. I could stay in the Reno area as my substitute teaching license is good for about 2.5 more years, i could go toward Washington with my mom or i could head back to the Portland area or lastly i could try someplace totally new. I loved the Portland area and loved living there so that is in the lead. The biggest question is also what do i want to do for work?
I have a lot to mull over right there and only have about 2-2.5 months to figure it out.
Where ever i go i think i am finally ready to start looking for someone to spend the rest of my life with. That was my problem on the trail, i want someone to share life’s adventures with. I want someone to section hike with me, i want someone to explore the world with me, i want someone who wants to farm with me and wants to start a family.
So, where do i go from here….that is the big question and one i will be working to figure out.
I still plan on hiking and working out and doing races and fun things. So ill tweak the blog a bit. I still want to do everything the blog originally said, it just probably won’t all be done in the next 5 years.
So if you are game, keep following along and we will see what happens!!!!!!!
I set my alarm for 5:30 and we were up and hiking by about 6:20.
Again within about 20 minutes we were climbing up a mountain! Why!!!???? I could see the road into Julian, it was about 2 miles north of us and instead we had to wind around a mountain. Oh well. hiking in the early morning was nice and we booked it pretty good. It was about 3 miles of hiking up and down on the mountain then about 2 miles i walking across the desert floor then along the road. I have never been so happy to get to a highway in my life!!!
By the time we got there i was so done, my feet were killing me! We got to scissors crossing which is believe is where the 805 and the 78 meet. We walked to the 78 and had about 3 cars pass up then the 4th car stopped and picked Danielle and I up. It was a local woman who lived in Julian. She gave us a ride the 12ish miles into Julian.
Julian is such an adorable town!!! We stopped in at Granny’s to have breakfast.
OHHHHH man was it so good, my first full meal in over 2 days.
On top of what you see, i also had orange juice, a Dr. Pepper, and Country potatoes. YUM YUM! They also gave us vegan peanut butter cookies, scone samples and some like fire roasted apple filling samples. They were wonderful!
When we were finishing up and resting a bit Danielle asked the owners if they knew of a place she could do laundry because she was continuing on that night. A lovely woman was just getting off work and offered to take us home with her so Danielle could do laundry and take a shower.
Nicole was her name. She opened her home to us and was so kind!!! We hung out at her house for 3-4 hours and she and i just talked and talked. Turns out we went to the same high school! Not at the same time but still. They were so wonderful! A true trail angel.
Mom drove all the way Julian to come pick me up. We hit traffic on the way back but overall it was nice. We stopped for McDonalds and Subway hahaha. It is so good to have food in my stomach again and not feel sick!
Getting to my Grandmas and taking a shower was also wonderful! The dirt was pretty caked on and i smelled pretty ripe!!
No i am not talking about the hills though obviously it is up and down. I am talking about my mood.
Well lets start from the beginning. Mom dropped me off around 9:30am
Walking away from my mom into the wilderness by myself was terrifying.
Thankfully the uphills weren’t too bad today and the scenery was beautiful.
Lots of wide valley shots.
But it didn’t take long to feel very lonely. I really missed my mom being there. When i stopped for lunch i found a small campground with picnic tables and some awesome shade. I ate with 4 other hikers, all really nice people. I hung out for about 2 hours and rested. Filtered some more water to get me to the next water source. It was my first time ever filtering water! My steripen worked yay!
I left before they did because i hike slower lol. When i got to the top of the mountain after leaving the campground i thought i saw a crashed plane on top! When i got there i realized it was this super fancy hang glider! Later walking i saw the hang glider out in the air, very cool!
One of the people i ate lunch with caught up to me and passed me but they camped about a mile or two before me because they had already gone 15 miles.
I made it about 11 miles which i’m really happy about and i only hiked for about 5 actual hours. But i did push myself a bit. I drink more water than last time but i’m still not that hungry and the thought of food makes me nauseous.
I forced down lunch but it’s 5:30pm and i haven’t had dinner yet. I’m hoping relaxing in my tent for a bit will help my appetite come. I know i need to eat.
Overall today was a good hiking day, probably didn’t get above 75-80 and there was a nice breeze most of the day but i just don’t know if i want to do this alone.
Of course as soon as i was having a low point i ran into someone from lunch and he told me the trails are a great place to meet someone likeminded lol, hmmmm can he read my mind?
But I still really miss having someone with me for support and a laugh and everything.
I dont know if solo hiking is for me. Ill see mom in about 3 more days so hopefully ill know by then, Well time to shove some food down and try to sleep. Hopefully i can get an early start tomorrow and do 15 miles.
So i woke up around 6:10ish. I slept in fits off and on all night.
Actually my tent was really nice and held up well. And it went up so easy and quickly!!!
I was up and hiking by about 7:10. The day started out pretty nice and easy, then it started to climb a bit. At first it was just pretty gradual ups and downs, very nice.
Interesting flower plant things out here lol
Beautiful views
But again i just wasn’t loving being alone.
It is amazing how quickly your emotions go up and down out here.
You have to stop and take rests in order to be able to complete the amount of miles and not wear your body out too much.
After my little semi-sad sit down i passed a little section of pretty yellow flowers. The smallest little thing can perk you up.
After this the trail meandered up and down the higher parts of the mountain at a pretty reasonable pace and slope. It was nice and i enjoyed the hiking.
But then we went down, down, down. It was crazy hard, it was pretty steep, killed my feet because it was also rocky and really killed my spirit because it got hotter as you went down and it just never seemed to end.
What popped into my head was a clip from Gilmore Girls when Jess moves to tiny Stars Hollow and he looks outside and a little song plays “this is hell, this is hell, isn’t it swell” or something to that effect so i started singing that to myself the whole way down lol. It is amazing the single line or two of a song that pops into your head and you just sing it over and over and over because you don’t have the energy or capacity to think of anymore of the song or a new song lol.
Or course when i got to the bottom of the insane down, i turned the corner and oh look there it goes up, just as steep in about a quarter of the time. It was horrible!!!!!! It was a badly done dirt road with giant pot holes and dry water streams that went like straight up. I had to stop 3-4 times just to catch my breath and dry heave.
The trail stayed pretty steady and hugged the mountains but there was no shade. The trail is the line along the mountain.
So the two hikers passed me by and we talked for a few minutes.
So i got myself to stay in the shade until about 1:45ish. Then got up and got going. Oh my goodness was it hot and dry. It was two more miles to the water tank and i fought for every step of them. It was rocky and dry and just unpleasant. About 3/4 of a mile from the water tank my hydration bladder was finally empty, i still had just over a liter of water in my water bottles but i finally drank my bladder dry. In the distance i could see the dirt road that the water tank was at so i hightailed the last 3/4th of a mile.
When i got to the water tank there were about a half dozen people there hanging out in the shade, because miraculously there was shade! I put my liter of water and 1/2 liter or powered into my hydration bladder then filtered two liters of water. I sat for about 2 hours in the glorious shade and drank one of the liters of wonderfully cold water (it was an underground tank) then filtered one more liter before i left.
While sitting in the shade i talked to a a guy attempting to go to Canada who had come from Alaska! I mean no one is really used to hiking in the desert heat but man was it a super shock for this guy lol.
After i had been at the tank about 10 minutes a girl named Danielle showed up. She had passed by my tent the night before and said hi. She is also solo hiking so we got to talking and decided to hitch into Julian together the next day.
We rested then headed out to do about 4 more miles so we would only have to do 5 miles in the morning.
We left the tank just after 5pm and rocketed out…..and i mean rocketed, she was like speedy gonzolas, there were times i felt like i was running after her.
We thought it would be relatively steady and not much climbing….but nope!!!! We had to climb up another mountain, and friends, i don’t mean hills i mean MOUNTAINS like going up 1000+feet. It sucked. We got up and over the mountain and around 7-7:30pm found a reasonable campsite. We set up quickly and i got to use the lamp my wonderful friend Sharon bought me.
That is the lamp hanging from the ceiling of my tent. It worked wonderfully!!!
In total i did 14 miles today.
I was passed out by about 8:30ish and again slept fitfully. Apparently that is normal for the trail.
Mom and i left my Grandma’s this morning at about 6:30am. We are heading to Mt. Laguna for me to start the trail again from there.
I’m very excited, i am taking my mom’s pack back in place of mine, since her pack is 2lbs lighter than mine. My tent is now 2lbs lighter than it was and i have dropped a lot of excess things from my pack.
Now with everything and food and water, my pack weighs 35lbs. Wooohoo!!! That is about half the weight that i started with.
Things are looking up for my hike. 😄
I am still nervous though and self doubt has certainly crept in. Fingers crosssd things go better.
So yesterday mom and i went to REI, i was a little nervous because i’ve never returned anything there but have always heard its so amazing, well it is! I bought my tent in April 2014 and they took it back with no questions. I am so impressed with REI, they may have just saved my hike!
The new tent i got is still a small 2person tent, i wanted a little extra room inside so i could spread all my stuff out. Its freestanding so barring a tornado (knock on wood) it shouldn’t collapse on me. Im really excited for this tent and bonus……its lighter than the one i returned! This tent is only 1lbs 15oz! Man technology is crazy.
It has a rainfly to go over it but i dont have it on in the picture. I love that it will stay standing even if i cant get it staked down out in nature.
Yesterday afternoon we went over to my aunt’s to use her WIFI and i replanned my entire resupply so normally i am not carrying more than 4-5 days of food. There are three or four times down the road where i get up to 7 days of food but it couldn’t be helped. I also cut down the amount of food im taking for each day, i cut a bunch of the snacks out.
So today i will repack all the food i have into several resupplys and set up directions and addresses and everything mom will need for my resupplys.
Other possible news is mom and i are talking about me taking her pack back out on the trail because it is 2lbs lighter than mine….but hers is brand new and 5 years of me using it would trash it im sure. So we are discussing it.
Ill keep you posted.
I should be back out on the trail tomorrow or Sunday!
So mom and i started the day in El Cajon, we took a trolly to the San Diego Amtrak station
Then we took the Amtrak train to Santa Ana
Enjoyed some lovely train food lol
My wonderful sister picked us up at the train station and brought us back to my grandma’s.
Here is the new plan, tomorrow mom and i will hit REI where i will get a new tent, one that doesnt use my trecking poles so it wont collapse on me in the middle of the night lol……hopefully.
I will rethink my entire resupply plan so that the max amount of food i will carry at one time will be 4-5 days MAX. And i will continue to eliminate more from my pack.
Ill take a few days to relax and mom will drive me back to Mt. Laguna on Sunday which will put me just about back on track.
Oddly i already miss the trail a bit. But ill be a much happier hiker when i am carrying less wait……now to Starbucks!!!!
Talk to you all soon and thank you all so much for the support!
Well mom and i had pretty much decided at the end of day one that we were screwed and had to turn around. Mom had drank more than half of her water and i hadn’t drank enough. We would have had to hike 11 miles forward to Lake Moreno, we knew that 7 miles back would be safer.
We were so exhausted we didn’t eat lunch or dinner the first day and today when we turned around we didnt stop for lunch.
We did rest a lot on the way back which allowed us to look at the scenery more.
We pushed to make it back to Campo by about 1:15.
At 2:54 the last bus leaving Campo came so we could get on it. The bus took us to El Cajon. We are now staying at the Rest Inn or something akin to that.
Tomorrow we will take the trolly to the Amtrak station and head back toward Long Beach.
To say the last two days were hard is an understatement. Last night once we laid down in the tent, fully clothes because it was so cold, i cried for a good 10 minutes, also not smart since i had lost enough salt.
What do i do now, how do i proceed, has all my planning gone down the drain?
I could sit and wollow and give up or i could take a step back an reevaluate.
For the near future i could go back home and teach more a month-ish, save up a little money and do some section hiking this summer.
This of course will be after i make some huge cuts from my pack.
After that i have to decide if i want to continue with the Appalachian trail next year and just section hike the PCT when i can or if i want to move Europe up a year.
This has been humbling and a great learning experience. And i am so happy to be in a bed tonight after these two difficult days. Ill let you know what i decide.
Trailing the blonde 