The next day, we continued on 78, past the aptly-named Chocolate Mountains . . .
And right through the Imperial Sand Dunes.
I always wonder how often they have to plow the sand off the road.
At Brawley we cut south to I 8 in time to travel my favorite section of the interstate which passes among the boulder hills. I always imagine that some giant baby stacked the rocks. How weird is that?
At exit 51 we stopped at the rest area. I knew the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) was close by and asked the friendly maintenance guy about it. He said it goes right through nearby Boulder Oaks campground. I had looked at Boulder Oaks, a national forest campground, on my favorite Allstays app, but it was listed as closed from March to May for toad breeding season. (I know, it sounds like a joke.) But he said no, it's open. And at 3300 feet, it's nice and cool. Yippee!
Just look! It's perfect. We settled in for a three night stay.
I just love the idea of these long distance trails, but I'm not one to sleep outdoors. My dream would be to do day hikes and have somebody pick me up each evening. Of course at 5 miles a day, it would take 530 days to hike the 2,650 miles of the PCT from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. Maybe I could work up to 7 miles a day. Then it would only be 379 days. Hum.
Instead, I guess I'll just be happy to hike short sections of the trail as we come across it. We couldn't wait to get a taste and decided to go one direction for a short distance right away. We picked north, saving south for the next day. We only went about a mile, but were impressed by the views in that short distance.
The trail was completed in 1993, so it's relatively new. Although our campground is only about 10 miles from the border, the trail is about 25 miles.
In 2011, Ron and I did a short section in Oregon. Look at the work that went into making that part.
I stopped at a PCT sign In CA and hiked only a few hundred feet just so I could say Ive been on it..I read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, it was not what I expected, I wanted more of an 'experience book'...but it was not exactly that.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job clearing all those rocks of the PCT! ;c)
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on these long hikes ... would like to do them, but in reasonable comfort. In NZ -- they offer transfer services on some of their multi-day hikes, which is how we came to do a couple days on the Queen Charlotte Track ... a small boat took our bag to the B&B we overnighted at; we hiked 18 miles over two days ... all that our limited time in NZ allowed us to do.
ReplyDeleteThe guys we met on the PCT last month were trying to do 13-15 miles/day! I could do that once but would be lucky to make a mile the following day.
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