We kicked things off with a two hour climb to get to Mount Laguna (super glad we didn't try to get here last night). I had the first casualty of the ride on this climb. At a stop to grab some water, one of my bottles cracked and fell apart in my hand. Next time I will leave the ancient water bottles at home. I still have two others but it was not an exciting loss. At almost 6000 feet the air temp was chilly with the strong winds. It wasn't too long before we both were wearing all of our bicycle clothing. It stayed on almost the rest of the day.
Sun coming up over the hills
Gulping down what didn't manage to spill out
Long climb but nice scenery
Yes, that really says 4.8 mph for 2 hours...the beast is heavy
Once we reached the top of the climb we were in Clevland National Forest and the scenery continued to improve even as the temperture dropped. We saw some stunning views including very evident remnants of a large 2003 fire.
Wearing ll the clothes
New growth mixed with remnants of the old fire
From my horticultural knowledge I identified this as a "purple" flower
Justifying carrying the extra camera up the hills
At this point in the ride we are pretty much running adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and are just behind the main wave of through hikers. Tonight we are staying with Sarah's friend Monty who is a major long distance hiker and "Trail Angel" taking in hikers and helping them with all manner of things (including filling their stomachs).
When we reached the town of Julian, CA we had to stop and look at their pie. not because we were hungry for pie (neither of us eat pie these days), but because we had heard about it from about a half dozen folks since we wee at the border. The couple that offered to take our pictures at the border were quite insistant that we stop for pie when they heard we were passing through Julien. When we arrived, w efound the pie. It is impossible to miss...every business in town sells apple pie and many are exclusively pie shops. While we never quite figured out what was so special about the pie, I assume it is really good so maybe you should try it.
The pie does look tasty
We finshed up our ride in Lake Henshaw at Monty's hiker haven. It was truly impressive to see what he does for hikers. The night we wee their, there were 6 PCT hikers, some of whom would be laid up there for several days as feet and blisters healed and new shoes arrived. They would stay and he would feed them and feed them a lot (apparently not finishing is seriouly frowned upon). We contributed some eggplant from a market passed earlier and Monty did a generous job of accomodatng my eating peculiarities.
Dinner with the hiker crowd
That is a crazy amount of food.
No comments:
Post a Comment