April 25

mile 77.1

0 miles hiked.

We woke up under our bridge to howling rain and mist. We made it into Julian California, looked at the weather report, and quickly decided it would be a good decision to spend a day in town. We booked a room at the Julian lodge and went to a local cafe to drink coffee and warm up while waiting for our room to open.

Julian is a cute little mountain town formed around an old gold mine. They are known for their pie shops, orchards, and local honey. We had many hours to kill, so we took a culinary tour of Julian. We stopped off at Mom’s Pies that offers a free slice of pie alamode to PCT hikers.

Our next stop was a local health food bistro where we ordered green smoothies and chatted with a local NYT best selling author.

We headed to our lodge and found that there were no laundry facilities in town. No problem. We washed 77 miles of desert dust off our our clothes in the bathtub.

While waiting for our clothes to dry, amber put on her only remaining clothes- rain jacket and rain pants and bought us sandwiches at the local deli. I am excited to announce an update to the food podium. Please see below.

we spent the rest of the night taking showers, laying in bed, and watching the NBA playoffs.

updated meal podium-

gold- Beef Sandwich at Fat Anthony’s in Julian California. Thin sliced roast beef with pickled vegetable medley-carrots, sauerkraut, asparagus, on a toasted rye loaf. Absurd. There is no reason a sandwich in Julian California should be this good.

Silver- jalapeno cheeseburger and acai bowl from Lake Morena Malt Shop. Acai bowl is the star of the show here. Frozen acai puree covered in sliced banana, granola, coconut and a honey drizzle. It gave me the illusion of a healthy choice while being delicious and refreshing. Burger and fries are burger and fries.

Bronze- peak fuel freeze dried beef stroganoff bought for us by the lovely nurse practitioner at our clinic Elizabeth. This is a partly sentimental choice, but also a very delicious fat bomb. It has 48 grams of fat, and I added a small package of olive oil to it. It felt greasy on my lips and slid down my throat. I like that.