Day Zero

Last night we both cut our hair to 1-inch length and said goodbye to all our friends. I spent some time panicking a little about our trip, but everything seemed to go according to plan today. Well mostly.

Our flight was delayed because the pilot didn’t show up. Upon arriving at our destination, we realized that somehow we forgot our printed permits for the hike. But otherwise, everything went great! We arrived in San Diego around lunch time and were picked up by my parents in their RV. We headed straight to Alpine Beer Company for some beer tasting and lunch.

From Alpine, a 30 minute drive got us to Lake Morena. As we checked in, the park ranger told us there would be some helicopters landing nearby shortly. Some PCT hikers had some trouble today and needed to be evacuated. We mentioned our plans to start at the border tomorrow, and hike the 20 miles back to our camp at Lake Morena. The ranger told us it took him 8 hours. Rob replied that we would try to do it in 7 hours and 45 minutes. We’ll see how that goes tomorrow.

The campground here has really large bats with audible echo location. Pretty strange creature.