Birthday Backpacking

Turning 40 is weird. It used to sound so old, and I know to people in their 20's and early 30's it still sounds old. I did not want to make a big deal of this birthday, and Jim had the idea that we should go backpacking for a night. I thought that sounded perfect. Hannah Hawkins agreed to babysit the girls from after school Friday until Saturday night (her first overnight gig) the weekend before my birthday.

We ended up getting away at 4:00 P.M., putting us in Julian around 5:30. Turns out nearly every place closes crazy early in Julian, so we had a hard time finding somewhere to get dinner. We ended up eating basically fried gas station food from the corner market. Then we got a slice of apple pie a la mode and a cinnamon roll (billed as giant and ooey gooey). Both were incredibly disappointing, which was sad. We threw away about half of the cinnamon roll, which was seriously lacking in frosting and hardly ooey gooey.

We started hiking in Cleveland National Forest after dark. We worried that we were missing prettiness, but I actually think it was probably prettier and more fun hiking under the giant moon. I kept hearing movement in the vegetation on either side of us, and at one point I was certain I heard a growl. I told Jim we were being stalked and made him get out the only weapon we had on us - a tiny pocket knife - just in case we had to fend off a boar or a mountain lion. In the end, the only creature we encountered was a man who was alternately really rude and really nice. When he first came down the trail toward us, he called out, "Are you hunting?" I was confused by the question and answered, "No. Are you hunting?" Turns out he was very perturbed that we were hiking with our headlamps on, given the bright moon (which did not always illuminate the trail and when it did wasn't bright enough to allow us to walk at a decent pace). He said sarcastically that at least we gave him and his friends a heads-up about our approach. We talked to him about where we might be able to camp, and he was really nice, other than a rude comment about how late we were heading in. We ended up going a little past where he and his friends had set up camp and finding a nice spot to pitch our tent. In the dark, it looked as if we were in a magical little valley. In the morning, it was nice but not as magical as it had seemed in the dark.

A view of our tent:

The sun came over the hill shortly after we got up.

Jim had asked me if I were OK with oatmeal in the morning. Camping oatmeal always ends up lukewarm and not my favorite, so I requested "jimmies," as Deetrix and I named them (donut gems/donettes). He complied with a big bag.

We figured we had hiked in about three or three and a half miles Friday night, so we had about seven or seven and a half to go on Saturday to complete the loop. It's amazing what good time you can make hiking without kids. We saw some pretty views, and I took a lot of pictures of Jim's back.

Part of our loop was on the Pacific Crest Trail. Jim began scheming about a giant, months-long trek on the PCT after we retire. It sounds fun, except I wonder if I'm too wussy and/or if my knees could take it. We'll have to see how we're doing in 15 years, I guess. 

I really liked this lone tree in the grassy area, but the picture isn't very exciting.

We had some nice views of Anza-Borrega Desert State Park. 

We reached the car at noon. Hannah was planning on babysitting until around 9:00 P.M., so we had to figure out how to spend the rest of the day. We decided to eat lunch in Julian, which officially has the worst food, although we did have a better apple-pie experience Saturday. There were pretty trees there. I love fall.

While we ate, we researched movies and decided to watch one in Escondido. We also hit a MetroPCS store to get me a new phone. (I had shattered the screen of my old one.) We tried to go to the Cheesecake Factory in Esco for dinner, but 5,000 other people had beaten us there. We ended up at a terrible restaurant on Restaurant Row in San Marcos. I have decided that a) as in Julian, all of the Restaurant Row establishments are awful and b) any restaurant frequented primarily or solely by gray-hairs is bad. Why do so many old people like bad food? 

When we got home, we found that Susan and family had put up some birthday decorations and left a quart of my favorite flavor of Baskin Robbins ice cream in the freezer for me. Meanwhile Mel and Derrick had come and hauled away a big pile of palm debris from our entryway. Jim had trimmed our trees a few weeks before. When I discovered evidence that rats were enjoying the new home created by the pile of debris near our front door, Jim agreed to borrow Derrick's truck to take it to the dump. Mel and Derrick made it disappear so we didn't have to deal with it. Good friends + great husband = fab birthday.